COUNTRY-STORY: KENYA Ensuring momentum around SWA commitments when a country is undergoing a decentralization process

Kenyan SWA focal points, including government and CSOs, were fully involved inpreparingthe country’s 2014 commitments and gathered vital National high-level support, including having the Cabinet Secretaryfor Health opening and officiating the First National Annual Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene.

The major challenge for partners at this time was the country’s on-going transitioning of power and services from National-to county-level, following the approval of a new Constitution in 2010. To ensure continuity and knowledge transfer around Kenya’s SWA commitments, the SWA in-country team implemented several activities, including:

Guaranteeing SWA commitments have county-level roots: At the National Annual Conference, organized ahead of the 2014 HLM, 46 out of 47 County Executive Ministersof Health made regional commitments which were then aggregated into Kenya’s official SWA commitments.

Focusing on advocacy at county level: Following the decentralization of sanitation to counties, high-level advocacy was carried out. This was aimed at encouraging the 47 Governors to invest in water and Sanitation. The Director of Public Health Kepha Ombacho, PhD, MBS gave brief presentation in

COUNTRY-STORY: KENYA 2015

The SWA Country Stories captures best practices from partners around the world. They include their experiences in using the SWA partnership to advance the case of water, sanitation and hygiene in their countries and of implementing the commitments countries made at the SWA High Level Meetings. For more information sanitationandwaterforall.org

The High Level Commitments Dialogue (HLCD) is SWA’s primary mechanism to engage high-level decision makers to take action. It is designed to encourage on-going political dialogue at the national (including sub-national) and global levels and is focused on achieving results on the ground.

Monitoring commitments is a key mechanism for partners’ accountability. Every year, partners monitor progress make on each individual commitments and that information is made publicly available. It is not just a technical exercise, but provides an important opportunity to advocate for stronger results on the ground.

3 commitments to increase

political prioritization

2 commitments to promote the development of a strong

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2 commitmentsto strengthen

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Kenya Commitments on WASH

Naivasha on the benefits of investing in Sanitation. The Director emphasised thatWater and sanitation have highly favourable benefit-cost ratios in Kenya (water benefits 2.5 times costs, sanitation 1.2 times costs). This takes into account only health improvement and time savings.

Keeping counties accountable: Commitments are mostly being implemented at county-level but the National government is responsible for tracking, implementing broader strategic planning and policy formulation (e.g. revised the Sanitation Policy, ODF Roadmap), and organizing the quarterly meetings of WASH partners to discuss progress.

Support implementationThis was done is different ways, for instance:

• County government were sensitized on the need to establish WASH Hubs in their respective counties. Some of the Counties have shown tremendous progress towards these WASH hub establishments.

• With the support of UNICEF, a Community-Led Total Sanitation(CLTS) Micro-planwas developed for each county in order to scale up access to sanitation and hence advance on commitment implementation. At National level, Kenya also developed a CLTS Protocol and Communication Plan for the counties.

• A CLTS Online Monitoring Systemwas developed with the support of SNV to enhance timely reporting. The National WASH Hub is currently offering technical assistance to counties on online reporting using the system.The National government is alsoharmonizing National WASH indicators through the technical working groups.

• A National behaviour-change communication campaign with the support of WSP was launched in April 2014, and it is being rolled out in the Kenya at the moment.

• Parallel to these measures, and to scale up implementation at the counties, the National government developed partnerships around sanitation marketingwith manufacturers, IFC, WSP and others to address the Demand and supply side of sanitation which was informed by formative research.

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