Liberia WASH Consortium Meta Evaluation 2007 - 2019

After the end of the second Liberian Civil War, the Liberia WASH Consortium (LWC) was established in 2007 as response to the water, sanitation, and hygiene conditions in the country. In addition to extremely limited access to WASH services in both urban and rural areas, the WASH sector suffered from a lack of harmonization and coordination, insufficient (or non-existent) national policy frameworks, and weak government capacity at all levels.

Currently consisting of six members, including Action Against Hunger (AAH), Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, PSI, Tearfund and WaterAid, the LWC originally targeted seven counties including Montserrado, Grand Cape Mount, Lofa, Bong, Grand Bassa, River Cess and Sinoe Counties. As of March 2019, the LWC remains active in these areas, with the exception of Lofa and Bong Counties. To date (2007-2018) the LWC has focused on the following areas:

1. Provision of Basic WASH services in rural and urban Liberia;
2. National and local institutional capacity building for effective coordination and data management;
3. Strengthening community structures and local actors for WASH facility sustainability;
4. Cholera preparedness and response.

Irish Aid has been the sole donor of the LWC since 2017 and is currently in the final stages of its Irish Aid-funded project: ‘Tapping into Liberia’s WASH Potential: Strengthening Sustainability in Schools and Communities’. A cost extension has been granted up to 31 March 2019. A key activity of this cost extension is the completion of a ‘meta-evaluation’ of the LWC from 2007 to 2018. Unlike a typical midterm or final-evaluation, the LWC Meta-evaluation assesses consortium impact, challenges and strategic direction from an aggregate, yet evidence-based perspective since its inception.

Therefore, the purpose of the Meta-evaluation is not to evaluate LWC performance against specific LogFrame or donor project performance targets, but instead to provide a broader strategic analysis of LWC’s mandate (and how it may have changed over time), relevance, impact at various levels and important lessons learned for both the Consortium and the Liberian WASH sector as a whole.

The ideas, opinions and comments herein are entirely the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent or reflect Irish Aid policy.