For Zinwa's consideration after 9th October
Nigel Lowe
Dear Engineers Katsande (& Mutasa), cc Engineers Rosen and Musoni, other ‘team’ members
Thanks so much for the meeting that Tendai, Andrew and myself had with yourselves at your ZINWA offices in Harare on the afternoon of 9th October. I am amazed at how time has flown since then. Please assist me to forward this email to Engineer Mutasa and or your Manager who we briefly met the same day. This emails builds on the type of interest and support we had had you’re your ZINWA Bulawayo catchment colleagues as also copied. We have already captured and reported our meeting in the root email below. We are already looking for further funding to support any future application of what we might help to demonstrate together with yourselves.
As we agreed - please alert your management about these ideas and we trust our Zimbabwe colleagues like Andrew and (or others - like Useni) can be available to ZINWA to explore alignment etc. on our behalf. Also Tendai seems particularly keen to be in contact with yourselves particularly with regard to Water Resources Management. There are seemingly some plans for Tendai and myself to possibly return to Harare before the end of the year or asap. This is for potential community leader workshops in sample localities. Andrew can surely hope to consult yourselves about this in case ZINWA might chose to play any part in those.
Also please note that the other email to GIZ as included below just for your / ZINWA information.
Regards,
Nigel Lowe
Infrastructure Management & Development Services
(Now trading as “SAIMIC” for Service, Support, Integrity)
287 31st Avenue, Villieria, 0186, Pretoria, Gauteng
Personal Profile: za.linkedin.com/pub/nigel-lowe/5/84/92a
Skype Userid: nigel.lowe
From: Nigel Lowe
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 7:26 AM
To: 'Lang, Helmut GIZ ZW'
Cc: 'Dagobert Mureriwa'; 'ste...@ibi.co.za'; 'ten...@waterresources.co.za'; 'SAIMIC_Not-s...@googlegroups.com'; 'i-am-e...@googlegroups.com'; Nigel Lowe
Subject: RE: Exploring GIZ positions and latest NRW-IAM positions and proposals
Good day Helmut,
Thank you for the time you gave Tendai and myself on Wednesday 9th October. We especially appreciated the briefing you gave about what GIZ has been able to do for Water Services in your 6 towns in Zimbabwe. I had thought leading into our contact that GIZ might be ‘at the sharp-end’ of what we are proposing from our end. That is evidently confirmed and what follows, I trust reinforces that, not-with-standing current uncertainties and difficulties. This email is primarily directed at the challenging programming level (see root email below). The project level especially to reinforce leadership from Bulawayo is then also briefly dealt with after that.
Our contact confirmed the appropriateness and potential fit for what we are proposing to do from South Africa. This will be to approach your GIZ Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) Programme via your Botswana Colleagues. I am convinced it can help us all to take matters further, especially within select councils (i.e. municipalities) in which your current efforts have established an excellent basis. But there is now a distinct possibility to extend that too to other Councils.
Further we have made good progress in approaching Strategic Community Leaders as advisors, ZINWA and ZILGA, for them to be potential stakeholders, if not partners and even role players in potentially deepening and extending such approaches to communities and contributors, especially more rural ones. An opportunity for a pilot case to demonstrate the principles in rural district council managed by ZINWA in Manyame Catchment will be one entry point provided funds are available or a sponsor can be found. This can then be extended to other catchments/communities.
Besides the emphasis on IWRM with GIZ, we will;
a) Engage stakeholders via ZINWA and others for Zimbabwean policy and strategy alignment as well as sources for sponsoring in lieu of government type funding. A Zimbabwean leading institution needs to be secured as well as to create the necessary linkages to potentially leverage any support in kind and hopefully ‘take-over / replication’ funding in future. The key issue is to ideally immediately seek a research sponsoring partner to initiate something in Zimbabwe similar to what is proposed in South Africa via the Water Research Commission and or key universities.
b) Engage ZILGA to particularly assist to identify the range and types of available and additional enabling and training that our interventions might most necessarily require. What is notable at this level is that I can potentially facilitate some direct partnering between the RSA Department of Water Affairs and Zimbabwe Government departments on potential sharing available content for Zimbabwean re-interpretation. This will especially be from the most basic levels of awareness and orientation. We believe we can assist to establish the contextual environment of necessary self-inspired improvement, along the lines we broadly discussed with yourself.
c) Engage the likes of Tearfund and other small donors who have a vested interest in confirming and enhancing the role of community role-players like church groups etc.
From the above, it appears to me that at least 3 potential further scoping work sessions are now needed and some facilitatory leading organisation is needed linked to your IWRM Programme.
Could GIZ be interested to;
a) Take on that mantle alongside ourselves? We observe and trust that the above is recognised from within GIZ that it potentially augments and diversifies what GIZ has originated. We can offer content but no longer afford to carry programming set-up costs.
b) (Or Alternatively,) please support us to find other Zimbabwean facilitating agents and partners to still work alongside yourselves and ourselves to build on what GIZ has achieved.
Regarding the project level, a further email will be directed at Bulawayo confirming our finding that Bulawayo remains our leading case. This is where we can keep yourselves copied as well. This is based on our perception that we might also be able to deepen, augment or diversify and further strengthen what GIZ has had a leading role in establishing in that case city. For your prior information this has three potential elements that we want to test with potential partners;
a) Approaching Bulawayo on an own risk basis. This will be based on what we are already aware of.
b) Specifically pursuing project “water zone / district” case studies that might be accelerated and or taken to greater financial closure towards securing initial bridging financing. Even source of such bridging funding might soon become an issue that might need attention soon in South Africa. That is how confident we are that we can soon be applying this type of intervention soon in South African candidates as well as Bulawayo.
c) Seeking further engagement and or (even independent) sponsoring to offer Bulawayo additional operational strengthening inputs, especially to assist them to begin to demonstratively incorporate what GIZ has already started with them.
I trust that once again this points to the level of potential alliancing with GIZ, depending on that GIZ’s future direction actually can be. Further I did manage to have brief contact with Dagobert Mururiwa but even Aus-aid’s future in Zimbabwe is currently under re-consideration. Seems like every country election only brings more uncertainty in donor type activity. That has lessons for ‘us’ (at broadest levels) in itself. Lastly I trust that all of the above actually points to the diverse options that might with your and Dagobert’s personal assistance be brought alongside your own future organisational options, in what-ever direction they actually take.
Thanks again for the time we had. I trust you can see how much I have been able to bring alongside that, even if our discussions were not as free-ranging as this. Let us now find the right and best stepping stones to still progress into ‘concrete’, practical, value-enhancing water-operations-based actions.
Regards,
Nigel Lowe
Infrastructure Management & Development Services
(Now trading as “SAIMIC” for Service, Support, Integrity)
287 31st Avenue, Villieria, 0186, Pretoria, Gauteng
Member_SAAMA, MIMESA, MWISA
Personal Profile: za.linkedin.com/pub/nigel-lowe/5/84/92a
Skype Userid: nigel.lowe
From: Nigel Lowe
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 7:01 AM
To: 'Lang, Helmut GIZ ZW'
Cc: ste...@ibi.co.za; 'mar...@telkomsa.net';
rtal...@rchc.co.za; 'Chris....@aurecongroup.com';
ten...@waterresources.co.za; Nigel Lowe
Subject: Exploring GIZ positions and latest NRW-IAM positions and proposals
Hi Helmut,
This email is to set a clear context and clarify matters in advance of seeing you on Wednesday. Hopefully this makes better use of time when we meet. I am afraid I have not had enough time to really polish this. So I hope this is clear enough.
Let me set the back ground and context. Non-revenue-water (NRW) provides a highly penetrative baseline of water services operational performance. Infrastructure Asset Management (IAM) frameworks define the management elements and notably incremental, progressive practices that also need concurrent attention to actually fully incorporate and respond to the identified operational performance issues. Used in a combined fashion (i.e. NRW-IAM), they broadly identify service delivery value-chains that not only underpin operational strengthening but also potential service level review, organisational development and policy refinement options. IAM has internationally been best used as a strategic instrument of service sector reform and development. In our Southern African context, we contend that it should or could be similarly applied IF it can be creatively and innovatively applied to our actual realities. Both NRW-IAM depend on actual and coherent application. We contend that what is actually needed is “sufficient support” to actually assure that they are actually applied to their fullest and appropriate value in demonstrative, actual performance-based applications. Easy to contend but what is actually needed is the partners to turn such statements into tangible realities.
As background we believe our NRW-IAM proposals could and actually need to be applied, notably demonstratively, at two levels;
a) A project level together with individual water authority / providers (WSA/P’s like Bulawayo, ZW or other places like Potchefstroom, RSA). This is particular contractual set-up between a project leader organisation and the individual water authority and provider to provide specific operational activities and services. This contractual arrangement is currently under discussion among a number of partnering role players in South Africa. It largely appears to have broad generic application and in case instances, like perhaps in Bulawayo probably has been taken fairly far on an activity basis, notably under current broad partnering and particular activity like via World Vision. However appropriate contractual arrangements to extend, replicate and adapt this to other places is evidently perhaps one particular opportunity for further development. Even if this is partially in hand from GIZ in South Africa, there still needs to be demonstration.
b) A Programming level especially involving stakeholders and representative groups. This is to particularly provide external operational and process support as well as broad ‘enabling’ (awareness, training, coaching, etc.) to assist the water authority / provider to progressively actually incorporate and develop its own water service management capabilities. This also even seems to be happening to some degree in Bulawayo and this will . The IAM offers coherent processes and tools to take this into increasingly more formal levels. Also if there was greater stability, normality, greater internal capacity and less accumulated needs this programming would not be needed but in extreme cases in very weak WSA/P’s VERY little can be achieved. This is definitely the case in South Africa but similar challenges no doubt exist quite broadly across the SADC region.
I trust you can see that our thinking has actually advanced quite far. The critical issue is now the sourcing of funds and partners to turn these ideas into reality.
In South Africa, we are particularly waiting on support from the Water Research Commission for an initial grant that will at least establish point of entry for application in South Africa. This should be this month or next. However it is also equally apparent that there are significant remaining funding gaps especially of softer grants, especially on the broad project enabling and programming levels. We are even proposing very specific special structure/s are explored and positioned linked to Integrated Water Resource Management. I assisted by Tendai will specifically need to explore and explain this when I am with you. Let us aim to give this enough time to initiate what actually needs to be a whole separate conversation. But RSA options do not stop or depend on only that. We do believe that in the stronger and more coherent WSA/P cases, there is now a distinct potential for gearing in bridging funding. Notably that even requires and enables other funding options into things like own contributions and revolving funds etc.
In Zimbabwe, I observe lots of existing parallels. The issue is how to practically insert and attach NRW-IAM and of course learn from your current efforts. Using RSA precedents, we would want to go for both a number of projects and then shared ‘programming’. The critical issue is of course current activity and notably access to existing background information. Like what-ever has been documented via your own NRW-efforts.
So our meeting is actually ‘quite loaded’. Fortunately Tendai and i are not too constained after 0900 hours so we might go on if you can allow more time. I hope this helps to focus our conversation.
Regards,
Nigel Lowe