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Rural Water Supply Corruption in Ethiopia 167
What of political and administrative decentralization? Does this carry
the risk of devolving money and power to tiers of government where
oversight and accountability remain weak? A conclusion from our study
is that although it makes sense for woredas to support self-supply and
other low-end technologies (spring protection, for example), there are
sound reasons for retaining borehole planning and procurement at
regional or zonal levels, in part to reduce corruption risk.
Recommendation 4: Retain borehole planning and procurement responsibilities
at regional or zonal levels.
Decentralization policy raises the question of which tasks and responsibilities
should be retained and which should be devolved. There are
sound technical, economic, and anticorruption-related arguments for
retaining borehole planning and procurement at regional or zonal levels.
This is where core expertise exists, where economies of scale can be
found in the “batching” of contracts, and where government oversight and
supervision probably work best, albeit with some reservations, as specified
below.
Recommendation 5: Improve the quality and accessibility of monitoring
data about rural water supply investment, infrastructure, and functionality.
One area that sector stakeholders singled out for attention was weak
monitoring and evaluation, which includes several elements:
• Infrastructure inventories do not link schemes to financing modalities,
making attribution difficult.
• Infrastructure inventories themselves are inadequate or fragmented
among different stakeholders at different levels, making it difficult to
know what has been built where. (One of the major obstacles faced in
the postconstruction survey was compiling information on boreholes—
from initial contract documents to site locations and final completion
reports).
• Information systems for monitoring access to water—beyond theoretical
coverage—remain inadequate despite being vital to support planning
and to guide the allocation of funds. Significant distortions in the
reporting of access to water occur at different levels of government,
leading to perceptions of corruption as figures are inflated for political
ends.
Taken together, these weaknesses are perceived as contributors to corruption
risk by making it difficult (for government and for donors) to link