Although the International Drinking Water Supply andSanitation Decade has generated great interest from foreignaid donors, its impact. in terms of increased service levelshas been poor. These disappointing results have beenexplained by the UN and other donors in terms of inadequatefunding and lack of cost recovery, poor operations andmaintenance, lack of personnel, unacceptable technology,poor logistics and non involvement of the beneficiaries.However, an alternative explanation revolves around factorscontributing to poor project design. These include the lackof understanding of the development process, donor bias andself interest, and poor coordination and commitment by therecipient government. A review of the development andtrends of contemporary aid philosophy and its translationin to rural development and water and sanitation projects,which led to the launch of the IDWSSD, provides a number oflessons that can be used to formulate a hybrid model forproject design and the sector development process, thatdefines the relative roles of donors, recipient governmentsand people themselves. The model is based on coordinateddevelopment, community participation, and sector growthfrom pilot projects to large scale programmes.The developments in the rural water and sanitationsector that took place in Zimbabwe from 1974 to 1987,provide a unique opportunity to test this model using asystems analysis approach. After gaining Independence in1980, Zimbabwe's development assistance funding grewtenfold with the influx of foreign donors, and majorcommitments were made by the new Government to ruraldevelopment and the goals of the IDWSSD. However, the largeinvestments in water and sanitation which included thepreparation of a national master plan with externaltechnical assistance, had both positive and negativeimpacts on the continuing development of the sector, thestart of which can be traced back, well beforeIndependence, to small pilot projects sponsored by nongovernment organizations that used appropriate technologydeveloped by the Rhodesian Government. This developmentprocess and the changing approach to project design isillustrated by a series of case studies of projectssupported by multilateral and bilateral donors, and nongovernment organizations, that were milestones during thisperiod.Finally the project and sector development model ismodified based on the practical lessons from Zimbabwe andrecommendations for future practice are made together withsuggestions for areas of further research.
