Zimbabwe's Rural Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Information System employing Real Time Monitoring Approaches and Tools using Mobile Tech

UNICEF Zimbabwe’s Water and Sanitation (WASH) programme aims to improve equitable use of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene practices. The government has invested in a Rural WASH Information Management System (RWIMS), a near-real-time monitoring system to improve data reliability, equity analysis and use of technological innovations in emergency preparedness and response. Several limitations however have been identified with RWIMS: (i) lack of consistent communication between key informants at the community level and enumerators (data conveyors to national Geodatabase) (ii) absence of feedback to communities resulting in reporter lethargy as no action was being taken by responsible authorities on water and sanitation issues raised by community members.

Integrated real time feedback by community informants on the status of changes in WASH infrastructure is allowing for the quicker repair and improvement in services in hard to reach rural areas. The feedback, using RapidPro is reflected in real time in the national Rural WASH Information Management System online portal which is available for all stakeholders to see. Dashboards are available on current status of WASH infastructure from District to National levels, where decision makers can easily monitor breakdowns and timely response.

As of December 2019, 5,385,665 children have been reached with real-time data-supported water and sanitation service delivery through the RWIMS - 1.8 million of which were reached via community-level use of mobile open-source technology, RapidPro. In Insiza district alone, the response rate to solicitations was over 70%, and 68 water points were reported as non-functional. After intervention, 46% of these were restored to full functionality.