Develop and Scale District Public-Private Partnerships that Sustain Reliable Rural Water Supply in Uganda

This fact sheet highlights SWS’s work in Uganda, where Whave is working to cultivate a sustainable model for rural water service delivery by testing a preventive maintenance approach in three pilot districts. Operating as a Ugandan regional service provider, Whave is signing multi-year preventive maintenance service agreements with communities that require community leaders to charge operation and maintenance tariffs, manage the collected funds in supervised bank accounts, and pay an annual service fee.

An important component of this model is incentivizing local technicians to prevent breakdowns by paying them based on the number of days a water source is functional instead of paying them to make repairs. Whave is helping government build an effective institutional and regulatory structure to establish and enforce preventive maintenance services. When incentives are aligned and costs can be recovered locally, the system can continue to work, increasing the sustainability of rural water service provision.