The Role of Government in Maintaining Rural Water Supplies: Caveats From Malawi's Gravity Schemes

Malawi earned a great deal of praise for its programme to build gravity-fed piped water schemes in rural areas, because the government limited its own role by turning over many responsibilities to the community. Unfortunately, the government has not been able to provide the supporting services and recurrent financing necessary under even this limited role. As a result, the schemes are functioning at about 50% of capacity. These problems did not arise because programme designers and implementers neglected to plan for operation and maintenance. Rather, they thought that a very good system was in place. However, both observers and those directly concerned failed to identify or act on flaws in the planned system for a number of reasons, such as the blinding success of the construction programme, and a willingness to accept rather than evaluate underlying critical assumptions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.