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Gender integration in the water sector
Ministry of Water and Irrigation
Kenya

The Problem

In spite of its importance in development and poverty reduction, the water sector has had one of the largest gaps between what women do and the influence they actually have. In Kenya, women are still underrep-resented in water governance structures at all levels, yet they are the most negatively affected by unavailability of water. To substantially boost gender integration in the country’s water sector, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MoWI) has been leading an initative to effectively integrate gender in the water sector addressing gender gaps at broad fronts.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The entire water sector has benefited from a levelling up in the way gender has been integrated. The initiative started with action-oriented capacity building of the system of Gender Focal Point in water sector institutions, and then spilled over to training the water utilities who are at the interface with waterconsumers as well. Currently the initiative is being replicated and district officers in arid lands are being trained, as are the managing directors in the sector. Moreover, the newly trained officers have been participating in experience exchange practices and hence have been exposed to global best practice. Currently all the newly built capacities are engaged in providing gender-related advice to the current process aiming to develop new policies in the water sector. The capacities built have empowered officers who have been able to negotitate funds for their activities, build capacities of others, and substantially increased the effectiveness of public service delivery of water.
The entry point was the MoWI performance contract. Every year the Government of Kenya evaluates performance based on a negotiated agreement signed between GoK and the management of public agencies, and releases the results through the media to the public. Good performers and their teams are publicly rewarded. As a consequence, top management of public agencies takes great interest throughout the year to perform well. Since 2008, gender was included as one of the indicators evaluated within all performance contracts including water sector agencies, making them
keen to address gender.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The Ministry of Water and Irrigation, the Water and Sanitation Program and the World Bank have been collaborating ona workplan, driven by the priorities of the Government of Kenya. The initiative has been undertaken using parntnerships and synergies. For example, the mentioned partners recognized the need for genderdisaggregated data that would inform evidence-based policymaking. The opportunity was seized when a nationwide survey for the Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Agribusiness
Program (KAPAP)costing US$475,000 was initiated. The partners were able to piggyback on this survey and integrate a water and sanitation module which will now
generate much needed gender-disaggregated baseline data
for the sector and inform appropriate responses to address identified gaps. Similarly, collaboration was evident in the capacity building workshops, enriched by substantive skills and perspectives from various ministries and organizations. The World Bank,
the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development, the Ministry of Planning’s National Bureau of Statistics, the Water and Sanitation Program, the University of Nairobi, United Nations Environment Program, United Nations Development Fund for Women, the NGO Gender and Water Alliance, and consultancy firms all contributed towards the training initiatives.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The strategy can be summarized as being one that aggregates, integrates and accelerates gender integration in the water sector. Collaborative strategy, driven and managed by the Ministry of Water and irrigation with the aim at addressing gender gaps at broad fronts through gender-disaggregated data generation, capacity building, gender-responsive policies at all levels, including concrete actions to redress the gender-related gaps in the sector. An additional strategy has been to disseminate widely the lessons learned from the initiative and to join hands to effectively utilize resources. Communicating early success of the capacity building workshops and action plans is leading to horizontal and vertical replication. Preliminary observations demonstrate
stakeholder interest to learn from workable and replicable gender integration strategies.
The lessons learnt have been widely shared, for example
during the Bank’s 2010 Annual Meetings, Stockholm Water
Week 2010 and 2011, GAP learning workshop in Washington 2011, Multi lateral Development Banks Gender Workshop in Addis 2011; UN Women conference
on innovations in rural service delivery in Dar es Salaam 2011. The sharing process has represented an important starting point for replication, spin-offs
and partnerships. During many of these occasions, the lessons have triggered interest in the initiative.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Dec. 2009: group on gender and water formed; managed by MoWI, containing members from WSP and WB and local NGOs;
March 2010: First action-planning training of Gender Focal Points in the water sector;
June 2010: Follow-up workshop to institutionalize the approach;
Aug. 2010: Development of a water schedule for the gender-disaggregated rural data collection, and collection of data in May-Aug. 2011;
Sept. 2010, Feb. 2011, June 2011, Aug 2011: Presentation of initiative at World water Week, Gender and Infrastructure Workshop, and 2011 UN Public Service Award in DSM;
April 2011: Experience exchange to to India to learn about gender-sensitive water delivery in both rural and urban water delivery;
May and November; Training of utilities/water companies, managed by WSP, including training of managing directors;
2010 and 2011; team of trained staff participated as resource persons in design missions of bank-supported lening operations;
2011; Italian Government steps in to replicate training in arid lands at distruict level.
And now the gender-disaggregated data is being analyzed, those trained are training others, the initiative is being replicated to other sectors (e.g. energy), and the group plans to provide advice for gender integration of water sector policies. The group of professionals is meeting on a continuous basis.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Manager drive was solicitied through close consultation. The relization of the ambitiopus scope and objectives of the initiative was overcome through commitment, collaboration, continuous dialogue, and transparent sharing.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The initiative started off with a modest contribution from the World Bank's Gender Action plan of around 35,000 USD. This then had a catalytic effect on the sourcing and expansion of the program and resources have been generated from within MoWI, the partners and other bilateral organizations. Resources were mobilized by the team. The presentation of the initiative in several fora had a beneficial effect, as did the vast documentation and dissemination of knowledge regarding the initiative. Collaboration was not only between different organizations, it was also between the water sector agencies. Once buy-in was secured at top management, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation for example, instructed the Water Service Boards to support the capacity building and action plans for the utilities. This request was fulfilled with full cooperation; staff time has been allocated by the Water Service Boards to supervise utility action plans.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Highly replicable as has been already demonstrated. The capacity building initiative has been replicated both vertically (within the sector, to districts, top-level management, and water companies) and horizontally (to the energy sector). Other countries are looking to learn from the experience.
The lessons learnt have been widely shared, for example
during the Bank’s 2010 Annual Meetings, Stockholm Water
Week 2010 and 2011, GAP learning workshop in Washington 2011, Multi lateral Development Banks Gender Workshop in Addis 2011; UN Women conference
on innovations in rural service delivery in Dar es Salaam 2011. The sharing process has represented an important starting point for replication, spin-offs
and partnerships. During many of these occasions, the lessons have triggered interest in the initiative.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Aggregation, transparent communication, shared goals, pooling of resources and trust and willingness to accelerate. Morover, having all these ingredients in a team makes the initiative so enjoyable that energies are actually produced, rather than consumed, in the process.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of Water and Irrigation
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Theresa Wasike
Title:   MoWI under-secretary  
Telephone/ Fax:   +254-721728828
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   tkwasike@yahoo.com  
Address:   Upper Hill
Postal Code:   00100
City:   Nairobi
State/Province:  
Country:   Kenya

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