A project report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering Johannesburg, 1996 / Current practice of'the rural water sector in Mozambique does not generally consider all factors that have influenc.eon project sustainability, The urgent need to provide returnees in rural areas with safe water, does not give adequate time to engineers, technicians and those involved in the sector, to conceive and plan a water project property. A Decision Support System (DSS) for rural water supply has been proposed to assist the decision making process to be more systematic, fast and comprehensive. It requires a number of input cata variables which are not difficult to obtain and these variables have been selected to ensure that most aspects inherent in a successful project are considered. The main achievement of this system is the project report, similar to a project preliminary design, and the financial results which are important for project assessment and ranking. The Decision Support System is a computational model which uses engineering and economics approach to combine and process input data and information contained in its database. While the calculation method does not need constant updating, the database has to be verified frequently to produce reliable results. South African prices have been used in the database construction but a correction factor facility was incorporated to adjust and make the model useable in Mozambique. The model has been designed to be used by planners, engineers and technicians, and funding agencies. The model can be used by planners to assess implication of policy decisions on future water supplies and water resources development. For engineers and technicians, the model estimates water demands, project components sizes and quantities, and water source development and reliability. To funding agencies, the model is a tool to determine the best investment scenario of a rural water supply project.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2011 / Water shortage is a global problem. While other people in some parts of the world maybe enjoying enough supply of water others are faced with water shortage. South Africa is not an exception in this regard because some do not have access to water but rely on distance conveyance. Government is under constitutional obligation to supply this basic social and economic service. This study, therefore, aimed at investigating the causes of water shortage and the impact thereof on the household of Ga-Kgapane Township in Limpopo Province. This township falls under Greater Letaba Municipality in Modjadjiskloof. The data collected from four sections/localities of this Township showed that the area has a serious problem of water shortage. The lack of water according to the findings negatively affects the livelihoods and development of the people of Ga-Kgapane Township.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / This study was undertaken in the Limpopo province, South Africa. Its aim was to assess the capacity of the NGOs that benefitted from Masibambane which is a donor funded programme and to examine the contributions that they are making towards addressing the water and sanitation challenges. This programme made funding available to capacitate the NGOs with the hope that they will assist the sector. Five NGOs which are operating in various districts in the province were included in the study. This was a qualitative study. Purposive sampling was used to select participants from NGOs, municipalities, Department of Water Affairs and communities. Primary data were collected through interviews, focused groups and observations in the field while secondary data were obtained from NGO and Water Affairs documents. The findings of this study revealed that The Mvula Trust and Tsogang Water and Sanitation NGOs have the capacity to implement both water and sanitation infrastructure projects at a village level. Operation Hunger‟s expertise regarding water infrastructure projects is on digging boreholes and installing hand pipes even though it diversified to include water conservation. Akanani Rural Development Association has the expertise of building sanitation facilities while Thlavhama Training Initiative is still learning. It was also discovered that NGOs are good at mobilizing communities and also have the capacity to impart skills to the communities. Participants from NGOs confirmed that learning occurred through Masibambane programme even though some felt that the needs of the NGOs were not adequately addressed.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2001.

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (MTech (Civil Engineering))--Peninsula Technikon, 2004. / When considering water treatment in small rural and peri-urban communities, sustainability is one of the most important factors to be considered. Sustainability needs to be considered from financial, technological and socio-political perspectives. The major problems with sustainability of conventional small water treatment systems are the difficulty of controlling chemical treatment processes, especially when the raw water quality changes, and the production of substandard quality water. Another very important problem is lack of community involvement, especially over the longer term. The acceptance of new technologies by the community is of crucial importance in ensuring successful water supply projects. The anticipation of more stringent drinking water quality regulations and decrease in adequate water sources have brought membrane separation processes such as microfiltration and ultrafiltration on the advantage for potable water supply to rural and peri-urban areas. Membrane processes have the advantage of production of superior quality water and addition of fewer chemicals in the treatment process. The pUIpose of this study was to further investigate the potential of ultrafiltration capillary membranes as a one-step membrane water treatment system for potable water supply to developing communities. To successfully transfer a technology to a particular community, the technology must be suitable and acceptable and a social study was therefore also done to understand the social acceptance factors that govern the acceptance of these new technologies.

An enthusiastic global campaign on intervention in water in the Lower Income Countries (LICs) was launched by the UN at the International Conference on Water and the Environment (ICEW), in Rio de Janerio, in January of 1992. In June of the same year, in Dublin, a plan of action was devised and a commitment to the water related goals highlighted in Rio de Janerio was made. Close to fifteen years on, there is little to show by way of success in the intended countries. Over 1.1 billion people in the LICs lack safe water. The direct impact of this is a higher risk of waterborne diseases. The waterborne diseases claim 42,000 lives every week in the LICs. By any standards this is a serious depletion of the human capital stock. Looked at in light of the fact that these countries still heavily rely on labour in production, amplifies the need to preserve health. The inherent danger posed by the poor quality water‐ as can be drawn from the above statistics‐ seems to suggest that improving the quality of water would go a long way in improving and preserving societal health in the LICs. By implication this would improve the productivity of the workers. Other benefits include cost mitigation, improved investor confidence as well as increased tourists’ confidence‐ all of which are vital for LICs’ growth prospects. It begs the question of why these countries have not improved their water quality. With specific reference made to Uganda, this research is bent on answering this question. In Uganda, there is consensus among scientists that the ground and open water sources are degraded to dangerous levels. Water quality parameters like turbidity, coliform count, and colour are all above the WHO minimum specifications for potable water and are on the rise in the country. This is indicative of water quality deterioration and it heightens the risk of waterborne diseases to the users. The waterborne burden of disease in Uganda is on the rise with a high fatality rate of 440 lives every week. The need to improve water quality in the country has been acknowledged. However, attempts to address the problem have only been undertaken on a small scale, most notable of these being the PuR home water treatment vii program. There is evidence in the country that the water quality would have apparent benefits. Strong correlations have been found between improved health in HIV patients and improved water quality in the country. In the economics of health, improving societal health inherently improves workers’ performance and productivity, leading to higher growth of the economy. There is an economic imperative therefore, as to why countries like Uganda should improve their water quality. In spite of this, even the country’s most urbanized setting‐ Kampala‐ lacks potable water. This study therefore investigates why, in a time when not only the global agenda is more supportive than ever and when the country’s water resources have been found to be risky to use, Uganda has not improved water quality. Kampala is used as the model district for this study. The district accounts for three quarters of users of treated water in the country. The problem is investigated by assessing the efficiency case of such a project (a water quality improving project) in the country; the methodology employed to this end is the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). The methodology compares the costs and benefits of a project, in monetary terms, in the same analysis, over its useful life. In the application of CBA one allows for the time value of money by using the discount rate to make the costs and benefits of the project occurring in different years comparable. In principle, the methodology is simple to apply‐ only that issues arise in the quantification of benefits and the determination of the discount rate. Benefits of the Kampala water quality, improving project include non‐market values and for this reason a non‐market valuation technique, the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), was employed in their quantification. The CVM technique estimates the benefits by measuring the individuals’ willingness to pay for the improved scenario‐ in this case the scenario was one with a water quality‐improving project. The application of the CVM across many disciplines has invited a lot of criticism over the reliability of its estimates as a measure of value. A panel assembled by the North Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to investigate the reliability of the CVM resolved that as long as the CVM was well conducted, the generated results would reliably predict non‐market values. The Kampala CVM, for the benefits’ quantification, was conducted with the NOAA guidelines in mind. The final value of the project’s benefits was the WTP predicted for the viii median respondent namely Ushs 385.07/= per cubic meter of water. The discount rate was deemed to be the social opportunity cost of capital in the country, viz 12 percent, this being that rate of return foregone by investing in another sector. The project’s costs were arrived at through liaison with water engineers and consulting past data from Uganda’s Water suppliers. From this, the project’s fixed costs were predicted to be Ushs 1451/= per cubic meter of water and the operation and maintenance costs predicted to be Ushs 591.7/= per cubic meter of water. The project’s useful life was deemed to be the average life of a Ugandan, namely 52 years; this choice reflecting the belief that the benefits would last over the users’ whole life. The results of the Kampala water quality‐improving project indicate that the project would not be feasible. It did not matter what discount rate one employed, the project’s operating and maintenance (OM) costs exceed the benefits. The results offer an indication as to why water quality has not been improved in Uganda‐ because the paying population is unwilling to pay for the entire cost of the project. This deduction is not to suggest that the users do not recognize the benefits of the project. The unpleasant truth is that the users’ incomes are typically stretched so thin by other demands that a decision to make more deductions from these incomes is not an inviting one. However, there is a need to improve water quality in LICs like Uganda, as can be deduced from the analysis of the risks of not doing so and benefits of doing so. Accordingly, such projects have to be funded by mechanism that does not require the users to cover the whole cost, but only part of such a cost, with the remainder from other sources like NGOs and foreign aid.

The meeting of the basic needs of people, particularly the poor, has come to be an important focus of rural development efforts in the Third World. This is largely due to the realization that the benefits of previous development efforts have not reached the poor. The basic needs concept of development places the focus on the ends of development. This means a direct attack on poverty through meeting the basic human requirements of the neediest segment of society, the poor. There are two approaches that can be taken when one adopts the basic needs concept as the theoretical framework for a project. The first is a top down effort concerned with satisfying basic needs as quickly as possible and is referred to in this thesis as a technocratic approach to meeting basic needs. The second is concerned with developing a sustainable project based on the community so that it can continue to meet its basic needs and is referred to in this thesis as a community development approach to meeting basic needs. The purpose of this thesis is to identify those elements in the planning process that contribute to the success of efforts to meet basic needs in developing countries. Success is defined as the meeting of immediate and long term water needs leading to improvements in health, economic and social conditions of communities. To accomplish this objective a literature review of efforts to meet the basic need of water is undertaken. The focus is on identifying elements found in the literature, dominated by advocates of the community development approach to meeting basic needs, which contributed to the success of rural water supply projects in providing an adequate supply of water to the poor. These success elements can be grouped in the following five categories: appropriate knowledge; appropriate technology; appropriate institutions; appropriate support; and community participation. The assumption articulated by most writers is that each of these five elements is an essential part of a community development approach to meeting basic needs. There is very little in the literature on the technocratic approach, yet it is used in practice. A case study of a rural water supply project in Kenya, East Africa, which used a technocratic approach, was undertaken with the expectation that it would show a lack of success because of its failure to include the five elements of the community development approach. In fact, the project was found to be a success. However, the study did reveal that the planners involved in the project now believe that, for the long run sustainability of the project, it is vital to make the five elements of the community development approach an essential part of the project. The main conclusion of the thesis is that a project using a technocratic approach to meeting basic needs can succeed in the short run but that for this project to continue to be successful there comes a point where the elements assumed to be part of the community development approach to meeting basic needs must be included. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The purpose of this dissertation was to identify factors that contribute to the sustainability of rural water supply facilities (WSFs). Twenty-four interviews were conducted: 16 from rural communities and 8 from water supply agencies. Key findings are that in order to achieve sustainability of WSFs, there is need to ensure that (1) there is an effective community organisation; (2) communities have the ability to operate and maintain WSFs; (3) communities are able to raise adequate user fees for purchasing spare parts; and (4) that there is a strong backup support at the district level to carry out major repairs. Major threats to the sustainability of WSFs include high poverty levels in communities, weak institutional framework and inability of communities to handle major breakdowns. / Social Work / M.A. (Social Work)

The purpose of this dissertation was to identify factors that contribute to the sustainability of rural water supply facilities (WSFs). Twenty-four interviews were conducted: 16 from rural communities and 8 from water supply agencies. Key findings are that in order to achieve sustainability of WSFs, there is need to ensure that (1) there is an effective community organisation; (2) communities have the ability to operate and maintain WSFs; (3) communities are able to raise adequate user fees for purchasing spare parts; and (4) that there is a strong backup support at the district level to carry out major repairs. Major threats to the sustainability of WSFs include high poverty levels in communities, weak institutional framework and inability of communities to handle major breakdowns. / Social Work / M.A. (Social Work)