Case Study 10: Development Workshop Angola – Missed calls for monitoring community water services
In 2013, we launched the M4D Utilities Innovation Fund (formerly MECS) to test and scale the use of mobile to improve or increase access to energy and water services. With the support of the UK Government, GBP 2.4 million in Seed and Market Validation grants was awarded to 13 organisations in 11 countries across Africa and Asia.
Today we continue our Case Study series on lessons learned from these 13 projects. A core output of the Innovation Fund is the lessons and evidence base developed throughout the grant timeline that can inform ecosystem players, such as commercial benefits to mobile operators, and social and economic impacts for the underserved. By making these lessons public, we intend to accelerate scaling and sector growth. Since the inception of these grants, we have already seen significant expansion and innovation to mobile-enabled products and services for water and energy delivery as well as sanitation, and the business models that support them.
The tenth Case Study in our series focuses on Development Workshop Angola (DW), a civil society organisation which identified the need for monitoring water services to establish accountability from the Government to communities in order to improve the level of service.
In January 2014, DW was awarded a Seed grant to trial VerAgua, a programme for mobile-based monitoring of community water points in the informal settlements of Huambo, Angola. These water points comprising in majority of handpumps, as well as solar-powered boreholes and taps, provide unreliable service due to breakages or unreliable supply. To address this, DW and their technology partner, SeeSaw, developed the VerAgua programme, a monitoring system to know when repairs or new infrastructure are needed, which was tested on 120 water points. The system includes:
• SeeTell, a system for water point caretakers to report water service status by making free ‘missed calls’ to different numbers corresponding to variable status, and
• SeeView, a mobile application for field staff to view and update the water point status in the database.
The key objective of the grant was to provide information collected through the mobile tools on the poor service levels to the Government in order to create accountability that would result in repairs and improved service levels to underserved communities. The following key findings emerged from the pilot:
• Caretakers are not motivated to report if they do not see immediate response in the form of improved maintenance. DW had planned to first collect information to get visibility on poor service levels, then use this information to create accountability within the various government entities responsible for maintenance to finally jolt them into action and finance repairs where needed. However, they found that water point caretakers became disillusioned and ceased collecting information when they did not see evidence of repairs based on their reporting. Government financing or an interim solution for repairs is therefore essential at the outset to sustain caretaker engagement and demonstrate the impact of monitoring.
• Barriers to reporting included high costs of airtime (despite the free missed calls) and challenges keeping phones operational. Although it is free to make missed calls, a minimum balance of approximately, USD 0.29 is required to initiate any call. Some low-income caretakers had difficulty maintaining this balance. While some caretakers were provided with free mobile handsets and airtime, this did not guarantee reporting. Caretakers used airtime for personal use and did not have the minimum balance for placing missed calls and some had phones that were damaged, lost, sold, or not charged (due to caretakers lacking access to reliable power). Similar monitoring programmes should include this as a consideration when designing interventions.
• Reporting via missed calls must be kept simple, but this provides limited information on services. Caretakers reported the water point status by using missed calls to different numbers to indicate whether a water point was functional, partly functional or non-functional. This was key to keeping the reporting simple and manageable for caretakers. The trade-off however was that reports only indicated the possible need for repair, yielding limited information on hours of service or the issue and required DW to make follow-up calls and potentially site visits.
Due to the lack of initial planning for repairs at the outset, DW, rather than the local Government, ultimately financed repairs to 33 water points (out of 47) to prove the value of monitoring. This resulted in an improved service to an estimated 23,100 people. Although the programme was ultimately downsized in Huambo due to the challenges in getting caretakers to report, DW and SeeSaw continue to see opportunities for growth of VerAgua in Angola.
DWA is now implementing a USAID-funded water and sanitation project in Huambo and continued use of the VerAgua system under this initiative is being discussed. Furthermore, the Government in Luanda (the capital city) has shown interest in VerAgua and is now supporting the replication of the services there, with the lessons learned from this pilot leading to improved design and implementation. Implementation in Luanda began in August 2015 for reporting on the status of the city’s network of community water points. To date, caretakers have reported more regularly and funds have been made available for timely repairs.