Sustaining Water Service Provision: Insights from the Budikadidi Activity in Kasai Oriental

This learning report, produced by the USAID/Budikadidi (“Self-Reliance”) Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA), summarizes the lessons and insights related to constructing and supporting water supply infrastructure from Budikadidi’s seven years working in the Kasai Oriental Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Activity operated in a dynamic and rapidly changing policy environment, yet the results are strong and offer good lessons for pursuing water service provision sustainability in other regions of the DRC.

Overall, the report has three aims:

1. To summarize Budikadidi’s strategy for water service provision and the differences between small piped networks, boreholes, and spring sources against a changing backdrop of national policy. (Section 1: Background).
2. To share learnings from a mixed-methods endline assessment of 29 water systems (boreholes and spring sources) focused on water-service-provision sustainability. Conducted in June–July 2023, this endline assessment explored the perspectives of both water management committees and water users. (Section 2: Assessment).
3. To reflect on lessons learned and opportunities for future water service provision programming in the DRC. (Section 3: Lessons and Recommendations).

Related Resources

• Democratic Republic of the Congo Water Resources Profile