Burkina and Ghana: sharing water and approaches

Burkina Faso and Ghana are the two closest countries in the WASHCost project. Not only are they neighbours, they even share some water basins and river such as the Black and White Voltas. Now the countries have pledged themselves to work more closely in approaches to data collection and methodology. Later this year, they will produce some joint reports analysing of data on water and sanitation costs and service levels. But at a meeting in Ouagadougou in February 2010, the two country teams agreed that they are working in different country contexts and cannot do things in exactly the same way. As Patrick Moriarty, WASH specialist for WASHCost Ghana put it: “Harmonising is not about changing the whole country approaches, but about sharing and learning from each other.”

The joint meeting Harmonisation of research methodology took place from 13-15 February 2010 at the CREPA headquarters in Ouagadougou. Discussion focused on the methodology of sampling and of data collection. Teams also looked at some surprising findings from the research so far.

• The Ghana team reported that in the northern region boreholes are sited where the engineers can find water, not necessarily close to the community. In Kakoshie Gonja most village households are more than 500 metres from a borehole.
• In Oyibi area, Ghana, where people had not paid their water bills, they had in fact spent more on soap than on water.
• In Burkina information in rural areas can prove misleading if not triangulated or collected from the right source. From the census the research team is given ‘lineage’ households which may turn out to comprise many families. In one case, where they were given a single location of a house, they found 600 people in different households and 100 people in one house.

Sampling

Sampling patterns differ but both countries reach comparable numbers of people. The Ghana team is sampling 50,000 inhabitants; Burkina around 40,000. In a typical village of 1,000 to 5,000 people in Burkina Faso exploratory research, and socio-demographic and geographic surveys take 30 persons per days. Household surveys are more time consuming. They have to visit some communities three times in a year to capture water use in the dry, wet and harmattan (dry and cold) seasons – they can spend 276 person-days collecting data about one village. The Burkina Team also spends two days observing how much water is collected from each water point and by whom.

In Ghana team District offices provide village profiles and research officers recruit and train enumerators from the district water and sanitation team. The field team comprises 2 research officers, 4 research assistants and 4 enumerators. Field assistants assist and supervise. The team carries out a light household survey of all households and a detailed survey at 140 households. WATSAN members accompany the team to map water points and the team interviews members of the Water and Sanitation District Board (WSDB). Participants considered whether it would be possible to stop collecting data which the project is not likely to use. However, Zakari Bouraima, governance specialist for Burkina Faso, said it was better to collect all available data and seek ways of analysing it later. However, the Burkina team was considering whether to focus on infrastructure surveys and scrap household surveys altogether.

Sanitation

Collecting data on sanitation is a problem because neither Burkina Faso nor Ghana is meeting sanitation level standards – in Ghana national coverage is 11% and in rural Burkina Faso coverage is 10% - 15%. In Burkina villages you can get information on capital expenditure (CapEx) but not on operating costs (OpEx). This makes ecosan (Ecological sanitation) toilets, for example, look cheaper than they are when maintenance costs are included. The big challenge is open defecation although public latrines are provided at markets, car stations, stadiums, schools etc.

There is a close relationship between hygiene and sanitation. Cyrille Amegnran, country coordinator for Burkina Faso suggested it would be possible to consider some “best cases” from which to analyse sanitation and hygiene together. Zakari Bouraima suggested doing a research case study on the costs of a public latrine and the ability of people to pay. “We think rural people can pay to use latrines but this is not always the case.”

The regional meeting agreed that hygiene questions would be asked about:

1. Water collection and storage (domestic use- eating and washing)
2. Hand washing
3. Excreta management
4. Use and maintenance of the facility (cleaning)

Both countries outlined plans for working with stakeholders and embedding the data gathering process into the country structures.
Both countries have selected research sites and carried out research with the active support of LA and Task Force members.
Burkina has developed training sessions for learning alliance (LA) members and is preparing briefing notes. The team will meet Task Force members in research institutions to propose thesis topics for students on WASHCost topics.

Ghana has developed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Task Force members who have participated in developing the questionnaires and in data collection. Task Force and LA members will be assigned specific tasks during the upcoming research phase. Burkina and Ghana committed themselves to working on a joint publication for the large WASHCost research meeting in November, and to joint briefing notes or case studies following data collection.

By Michele Adjei-Fah, Pascal Dabou and Peter McIntyre