The Zimbabwean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector is celebrating a massive increase in the 2021 national WASH budget, following the successful Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Finance Ministers' Meeting (FMM) in 2020. The sector had originally proposed a budget of ZWL$300 million (829, 000 USD) for the fiscal year 2021/2022, however, they were happily surprised by the announcement that the budget would be increased to ZWL$500 million (1.38 million USD). This is the first time that the Ministry of Finance is allocating funds to support the establishment of an information management system to guide evidence-based planning and budgeting. The ZWL $500 million will also support rural water supply programmes focused on the development of solar-powered piped water schemes. This is a direct response to the threat of climate change and demand-led sanitation, with the objective of eliminating open defecation.
The Zimbabwean WASH sector directly attributes the increased budget to the FMM, which facilitated engagement and conversations with both the Minister and Deputy Minister of Finance, and helped them understand how government investment in WASH could help deliver the government’s agenda of attaining an upper-middle-income economy status by 2030.
ZWL $20million (55, 000 USD) has already been disbursed to kickstart the information management system in one of the provinces, further evidence of the high priority that the Minister of Finance is currently giving to the sector.
Zimbabwe’s National Sanitation and Hygiene Taskforce has established a national strategy to eliminate the practice of open defecation, led by communities who are financing the construction of their own household latrines. During the 2020 Finance Ministers' Meeting, the Hon. Mthuli Ncube, Minister of Finance, recognized the huge investments that households have made in sanitation, and explained that he intended to build on this.
Rural households are encouraged to invest in simple and cost-effective sanitation and protected wells while government plays a supportive and regulatory role. The government provides subsidies only for those who could not otherwise afford to construct sanitation or protected wells. The partnership between households and government strengthens water safety and security at the household level
Since the FMM, the sector has established a financial tracking system for the WASH sector, which will allow experts to inform joint sector reviews, annual budgeting and the allocation of financial resources for WASH. After the full implementation of the tracking system, users can set and monitor targets, allocate resources in line with national priorities, and strengthen partnerships within the WASH sector.
The Finance Ministers' Meeting has granted the sector’s long-standing wish to develop and set up a national financial tracking system to support the collection, classification, analysis and reporting of WASH spending data as one way of strengthening accountability in the sector. All credit goes to the Finance Ministers’ Handbook which helped lay the foundation for this engagement.
As a result of the FMM and the case studies that were presented by other countries, the Zimbabwean WASH sector has also deepened its understanding of the role that the private sector can play in sector financing. Identified as a necessary evil, the private sector has an essential role in financing big investments, like the development of WASH infrastructure. The sector is also looking to leverage private sector support for their national cholera elimination roadmap, which has clear action plans and deliverables through the Mutual Accountability Mechanism.