This document discusses strengthening country processes to improve aid effectiveness in the WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) sector. It provides examples from Liberia and Niger of strengthening sector policies, coordination, financing, and monitoring. Lessons are drawn from the education and health sectors, such as using compacts to outline mutual accountability and linking partnerships to aid effectiveness principles. A funding cliff is predicted for 2015 as available financing declines sharply without sustained commitments. The role of the Sanitation and Water for All partnership in addressing these challenges is highlighted.

1. SWA’s Role in Improving Aid
Effectiveness in the WASH sector
SWA Country Processes Task Team
Geneva, November 2013

2. Agenda
1. Background
2. Aid effectiveness and the WASH sector
3. Strengthening country processes: examples from Liberia and
Niger
4. Learning from other sectors
5. Trends: the changing aid landscape
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3. Aid Effectiveness - Background
„Aid effectiveness is the effectiveness of development aid in achieving
economic and social development.‟
„It is about improving the quality of aid and its impact on development.‟

4. Why the need for increased effectiveness?
• Delivering effective development assistance is not only about
quantities of aid but also about how it is delivered and used
• From 1970s to mid 1990s the predominant financing modality was
the project based approach
• High transaction costs; burden on recipient countries to comply with
many different donor requirements and procedures
• Fragmentation (donor darlings and orphans), duplication, lack of
coordination, wasted resources
• Little accountability
• Isolated stand-alone projects, lack of longer-term focus on
strengthening country processes; no capacities to sustain project
results
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5. The International Aid Effectiveness Agenda
• 2005 Paris Declaration
• 2008 Accra Agenda for Action
• 2011 Busan Partnership
Agreement complemented by
the New Deal for Engagement in
Fragile States
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6. Principles of Aid Effectiveness
1. Ownership: Partner countries exercise effective leadership over their
development policies and strategies and coordinate development
actions
2. Alignment: Donors base their overall support on partner countries‟
national development strategies, institutions and procedures
3. Harmonisation: Donor actions are coordinated, where their
procedures are simplified and they share information to avoid
duplication
4. Managing for results: Managing resources and improving decision
making for results; and
5. Mutual accountability: Donors and partners hold each other
accountable for development results.
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7. Aid Effectiveness in the WASH Sector

8. Strengthening Country Processes to deliver
universal access to lasting services
• Increased sector capacity ensures governments can be held
accountable for delivering sustainable WASH services to all citizens.
• Sector‟s capacity to organize and oversee the delivery of services
are fundamental to accelerating progress.
• Key building blocks of an effective sector include:
• Sector policy/strategy
• Sector coordination and dialogue
• Sector financing and budgeting
• Sector performance monitoring and learning
• Systemic approach to strengthening WASH sector capacities
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9. Virtuous cycle of
aid effectiveness
Source: Adapted from Williamson et al., 2008
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10. In practice…
• Remarkable gains in access to WASH
• Benefits are very unevenly distributed
• Aid is not well targeted
• Harmonisation and alignment continue to be a challenge.
• Processes remain highly fragmented, with multiple funding sources
and dispersed domestic institutional arrangements
• Aid dependency and unpredictability
• Budget (Sector) support not significant
• Funding focused on new infrastructure insufficiently for sustaining a
service
• Weak absorption capacity at all levels
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11. Strengthening WASH Systems: The Cases of Liberia
and Niger

12. Key Findings
• Persistent aid dependence
• Susceptibility of the sector to broader institutional gaps of parent
Ministries
• Improving policy and governance environment often not followed by
expected investments
• Continuation of traditional funding modalities
• Need for cross-sector learning
• The 2015 Funding Cliff: Drastic funding falls beyond 2015
• Balancing the need for improving access, capacity, and institutional
development
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13. Declining levels of Available funding: 2015
funding cliff?
Figure 1 Comparison of available financing, selected sub sector headings
Comparison of Available financing for Based on Scenarios 1 and 2
120%
Rural Water Scenario 2
100%
Rural Water Scenario 1
80%
60%
Basic Sanitation:Hygiene promotion
Scenario 2
40%
Basic Sanitation:Hygiene promotion
scenario 1
20%
Urban Water Scenario 2
0%
2014
2015
2016
Urban Water Scenario 1
Source: Constructed from MHE BPO data, Joint Review 2013
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14. Liberia Funding gap after 2015
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15. Learning from Other Sectors
Lessons from the health and education sectors

16. Global Partnership for Education (GPE)
• Linking Partnership Mission with aid effectiveness - GPE Compact
on Mutual Accountability outlines commitments of developing
country governments, donors, and other partners respectively
• Strengthening structures and institutions e.g. through national
education plans, Local Education Groups, sector coordination
framework document and JSRs
• Sector-specific indicators to measure aid effectiveness
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17. Education example
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18. Mutual accountability
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19. International Health Partnership (IHP+)
• IHP+ Global Compact provides a set of principles and commitments
for all signatories, calling for well-coordinated collective efforts
focusing on delivering accessible sustainable health systems, and
backing comprehensive country owned and developed health plans.
• IHP+ Results monitoring process reports donor and country
progress against adapted Paris indicators
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20. Examples of IHP+ SPMs
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21. IHP+ Example 2
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22. Lessons learned
• Global and Country Compacts provide measurable tools for reinforcing
mutual accountability at the country level
• Linking Partnership vision and mission to aid principles necessitates
discussion of ways of working to achieve these goals
• Shared understanding of sector specific milestones and indicators
promotes open dialogue to define and measure commitments
• Use and support country level networks increases bottom-up
accountability and enhances feedback on partner performance
• Utilising existing data collection processes minimises transaction costs
• Assessing performance between partners and non-partners provides
evidence of the role of a common framework for action
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23. The Role of SWA

24. Trends
Aid Effectiveness is more important than ever...
• Fiscal austerity in OECD countries is putting pressure on donor aid increased emphasis on “value for money”, sustainability and impact
of ODA
• Relative decrease for WASH as a proportion of total ODA
• In many low income countries, WASH sector remains highly
dependent on aid
But the landscape it becoming more complex....
• Significant increase in the share of non-traditional donors
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25. Discussion points

26. Thank You!