Convening Key Actors to Improve Water Market Service in Eastern DRC

USAID’s Sustainable Water and Sanitation Systems Activity (USAID’s Activity), implemented by a consortium comprising Mercy Corps, Tetra Tech and Sanergy, is a 5-year activity launched in 2020. USAID’s Activity has been helping local actors to develop the market sector to improve sustainable and equitable access to potable water supply and safe sanitation services in four focus sites in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

USAID’s Activity’s holistic approach includes research to enhance understanding of the impact and scalability of the water and sanitation sectors, improving the enabling environment for water and sanitation service delivery, and demonstrating the market potential of economically sustainable water and sanitation service delivery. USAID’s Activity is facilitating local-led development to overcome several obstacles to durable and equitable access to clean water and safe sanitation. Some of these obstacles include: Evidence base and knowledge gaps for effective water security and safe sanitation in Eastern DRC that hinder the ability of the sector to expand, sustain services and improve resource management. Paining Governance interventions to implement the new Law on Water and supporting its National Policy on Water Public Services while also working to amend the vagueness of the Law about sanitation. Communities’ low knowledge level on Water Law and their duties and responsibilities in regard to water and sanitation sectors.

Lack of reinforced, sustainable and equitable performance-based business models in the target region that can prove the potential of the market.

Through the Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) framework, our approach has focused on allocating the time and resources required to build relationships and facilitate local actors  in defining their agenda.  We worked to reduce the knowledge gap and inform potential investors, operators and authorities at all levels on best practices in the sector. Throughout the design and implementation, we continued to build in time and budget space for external collaboration and adjusted our interventions through all programming phases which generated a range of plans that we tested in small bets. This led to reaching major outcomes even though we started implementing our CLA agenda a year after launching.