ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire (PAMACC News) - Dr Kerstin Danert is a rural water supply specialist focusing on developing in-country capacity with respect to operation and maintenance, cost-effective borehole drilling, technology adoption and sector performance monitoring, and the, and heads the secretariat of the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN).

In an exclusive interview with ISAIAH ESIPISU of PAMACC News Agency, she discusses the achievements attained so far, the lessons learned, and the bottlenecks towards availing water to the rural poor, as the 7th RWSN conference goes down in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Here are the excerpts:

What is this conference all about?

The forum is a chance to have people from different sectors including local and national governments, nongovernmental organisations, the private sector and community representatives to meet face to face, to exchange knowledge and share experiences.

The forum in particular is very important, because it is looking ahead towards sustainable development goals, and of cause for water. The idea is to have water for all by 2030. And given the fact that that 80% of people without water live in rural areas, we cannot meet this goal without giving attention to the rural people. So the conference is focusing on how we can get water to everyone. Yet no single organisation can do that alone, whether it is a bank, a government, or even a UN organ. It is not possible. So the whole philosophy of developing this conference is to have everybody to work together.

What have been the major challenges to the campaign for water for all?

There has been progress, because there are more people with access to safe drinking water than before. But the main challenge has been reaching out to people living in very remote areas, the very poor people, how to make the marginalised communities with very little means have access to safe drinking water.

Again, there has been a lot of focus on the Millennium Development Goals especially in the past five years to get the services running. But the challenge is maintaining the systems. For example, we can get pipes running, but maintaining these services for years is a big challenge.

And if you look at the contributions coming in through this conference compared to before, there is much enthusiasm on management and sustainability. So people and organisations are thinking more on how to have the systems to continue to work, and this is a positive change.

We need to focus more on professionalism, because if the systems aren’t built well, there is no way they can be maintained.

Another problem is that documentation of what is being done is very weak. That is one of the reasons we are having this forum, to encourage organisations to document what they are doing. We need countries to understand what is being invested, what technologies are working and where.


What lessons have we learned so far?

One of the lessons learned is that we cannot do things in a hurry. You need planning to get things done well. Just running before you can walk is a problem. We need sufficient skills in place to construct and manage. Without that, we cannot achieve sustainable water supply services.

In terms of technology, we are also seeing a bigger variety of water harvesting techniques, we have seen alternative technologies also growing, where people are investing and improving their own services. However, this is only possible to those who can afford.

It’s also important to note that one of the big issues is that since 1990s, there has been very little progress in rural water supplies in Africa. I do not know why, but this is an issue that should be addressed urgently.

Another key lesson is that we cannot think about water supplies, without thinking of water resources. They are totally connected. We need to understand the water resource, we need to measure it whether it is ground water, runoff water or water from anywhere.

What next after the conference?
As a network, we are just but a facilitator. You can’t tell people exactly what to do. You can help them find solutions. Each country and each organization has to adapt to the local context that is acceptable to the local people.

All documentations coming out of this conference will be available online. We also want to see if some of the contributions can be simplified and put together for the better understanding of a masses.

We also want to learn from everybody, and learn from the media representatives on how we can take some of these messages out to the communities.

What I hope to see is people working together. This forum should be a catalyst for engagement.

Who are present in this forum?

We have directors from governments, we have NGOs, we have civil society representatives, we have the private sector, we have the media and we have representatives from communities. What we have done is to bring together major global players in rural water supplies together, to discuss, to challenge each other and to come up with solutions.

All we want is to have people participate as equals so that they can challenge each other without the hierarchy. If we want to reach the solution for water for all, then we cannot afford to cheat each other.