The commune of Poa, 60 kilometres from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, is made up of six villages which are home to approximately 30,000 people. In November 2008, the 22 members of the WASHCost project visited the commune to get a grounding in local realities before starting an Impact Assessment workshop in Ouagadougou.

WASHCost is a five-year project to research the life-cycle costs of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in rural and peri-urban areas in four countries. One of the aims of WASHCost is to bring reality into cost estimates so that they reflect the real costs of service delivery – and so it is important to understand local context and challenges.

After a meeting with the village authorities, WASHCost participants split into three field groups to look at different aspects of water and sanitation provision and decision taking.

Group 1: Families in central Poa

The first group went to meet two families and to see a water pump that served an area of central Poa.

Both families owned Ecosan latrines as well as a more traditional pit latrine. The first family explained the Ecosan latrine brought prestige and they found it to be efficient and cost effective. The family lives close to the public meeting hall and people gathering there often use the family latrines, which means that they now want a third one! The second family liked the cost savings they made on fertiliser, the reduction in smell and the fact that it is easier to clean out sludge from the toilet than with a traditional latrine. This family too is considering building a second one.

The group visited a water point constructed with funds from the government and managed by an elected committee that includes the Major, the head of the school and community members who live nearby. The committee is responsible for collecting fees and for maintaining the point. To fund larger operation and maintenance task, the committee has to go door to door to collect funds. For one large breakdown, it took them 15 days to collect the money.

Group 2: A more remote area of the commune

The second group also visited a family with an Ecosan toilet in a more remote area. The owner/caretaker said that by producing his own fertilizer, he cut down on costs and simultaneously increased crop production. The caretaker was so enthusiastic about his Ecosan toilet that he is planning to build another, at a cost of 75,000 CFA or 114 Euro, to be paid in cash and kind. The toilet is used by all 20 members of his extended family. It has two chambers, each of which takes 4-6 months to fill up.

The group visited a borehole with a foot pump (see picture) that serves 700 people. The pump has been in use for more than 12 years and has broken twice, with repair costs of 75,000 CFA/ 114 Euro and 35,000 CFA/ 53 Euro. Community members pay 100 CFA or 0.15 Euro a month per adult to use the borehole which has to cover running costs and repairs. The water committee received training from the government when the pump was installed 12 years ago, but currently receives no assistance.

Foot pump in Poa serving 700 people

The local primary school, gives hygiene awareness classes to the children, but the head teacher explained that there was no water in the school so students had to walk several hundred meters and use water from a well to wash their hands after visiting the toilet at the school.

Meeting with women in the community

The third group conducted a discussion with about 20 women involved in cereal and brewing alcoholic drink.

Almost all of the women had a latrine at home. The cost varies from 20,000 – 60,000 CFA (30 – 91 Euro), depending on soil conditions, with lower costs on dry or rocky land. They said that sanitation had improved with the arrival of Ecosan latrines.

Women are usually responsible for collecting water in Poa and it takes about two hours a visit, as they have to wait in a queue. The community does have some wells but they empty in the dry season and the water is not as good as from the pumps. Half the members of the local committee in charge of communicating with the water board committee are women.

Lessons learnt by the groups

After a closing ceremony organised by the commune authorities, the WASHCost team (from Ghana, Mozambique, India and the Netherlands, as well as Burkina) swapped notes about what they had seen.

They were impressed with the quality of the latrines. One had been told “not to look at the cost but to look at the benefit”. However, they felt that they needed to be able to ‘triangulate’ what they were told about costs so that they could use the figures with confidence.

The main objective of the Impact Assessment Workshop was to come up with an agreed plan for assessing the impacts of the WASHCost project. The workshop was technically facilitated by the UK-based Oversees Development Institute (ODI) and organised by CREPA.

Adapted by Peter McIntyre from a narrative report of the impact assessment workshop prepared for WASHCost by Michele Adjei-Fah, Maria Chuma, Pascal Dabou and Jeske Verhoeven.

Tags: africa, ecological sanitation, financing, gender, learning alliances, sanitation, water supply