Rural WASH programming: experiences from Rwanda

Rwanda WASH Project was implemented in rural areas of four low-WASH access districts during 2009 - 2015 by the Government of Rwanda with support from UNICEF and the Government of the Netherlands. This project had four key components i.e. community water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion, institutional WASH and capacity building. The project, which benefitted over 500,000 people, resulted in increase in average access to improved water supply and sanitation in the target districts from 47 per cent to 85 per cent and from 34 per cent to 70 per cent, respectively. A project sustainability assessment carried out in 2016 showed that the infrastructure built under the project was fully functional. The experiences of the project underline the importance of establishment of effective project coordination mechanism, use of existing government structures, capacity building, strong monitoring and evaluation framework and public-private partnership for management of water supply systems.