Zimbabwe:Chegutu Municipality – Acting Locally and Thinking Globally Through Solar Energy Harvesting -A Panacea to Climate Change

Chegutu Municipality embracing the use of solar energy in piped water schemes to improve access its’ access to the residents. The use of solar energy to provide piped water supply to the residents was brought about as a result of erratic water supply as a result of pump faults and power shortages from the main grid. Due to climate change, the dam where the council drew its’ water would at times have reduced levels. The council had to drill boreholes which were motorised and networked using solar energy. That activity came about as a result of erratic water supplies being caused by power outages and the costs associated with water reticulation. Council then resorted to solar piped water schemes which were advocated for by the community during consultative budget consultations which were attended mostly by women.

The improvement of water supply was rectified by the use of solar energy as an option because of continuous power cuts. The use of solar energy had seen a reduction of the operational costs in water supply.  The community advocated for the solar piped water schemes which did not incur operational costs as compared to the mains grid. The finance committee approved the proposed project budget. Some tender were sent out. The drilling of boreholes and installation of the necessary equipment took place. The formation of solar piped water scheme water point committees took place and it mainly constituted of women. The operations and maintenance costs and how they would be done were also put into the picture at council meetings.

There were 17 000 (57%) direct women beneficiaries and 13 000 (43%) direct men beneficiaries from the project making it a total of 30 000 direct beneficiaries. Total number of indirect beneficiaries was 33 000 people made up by 19 000 (58%) women and 14 000 (42%) men. There were no online beneficiaries. The total number of women was 36 000 (57%) as compared to 27 000 (43%) men. The sum of all beneficiaries whether direct or indirect was 63 000.  The local authority had an allocation of $200 000. The community partnered with council in securing the fittings of the piped water schemes. The community assisted with the provision of labour and security.

A physical check could determine if the project was a success or not. Observations were done using checklists to see how those were being operated and maintained. There were monthly assessment forms and regular interactions between the local authority and the community. The involvement of the community made the ownership and capacity building of the project effective. The community could even report cases of vandalism because they knew that they owned the project.

The problem was of vandalism but that was overcome by formation of water point committees using the community based management and the customer support to service delivery concepts. The other challenge was the funding. However, the council managed to fully commit itself on to the project and found the much needed funds. The economic difficulties being faced by nearly every organisation and institution in Zimbabwe made the local authority to do the project with the assistance of the community only. There was no partner who came forth to assist the implementation of the project. The community had to come in and voluntarily take up some roles for the project to succeed.

Women were empowered as they could get water within their reach with those solar powered piped water schemes since they had been fetching water from long distances and hand pump fitted boreholes. Maidei Makoni a 39 year old house said, “At least the council helped us to access water 24/7 since these solar pumps use the sunlight which is renewable and as such we no longer have erratic water supplies due to power outages”.

Tavonga Choto, a Chegutu residents association member said, “As responsible husbands, we are now happy that our wives no longer have a burden of access to water supplies at any time of the day than in the previous years where water supplies would be affected by power outages from the main grid”. Diarrhoea cases were reduced because normally it’s caused by living in unhygienic conditions.  The community’s attitude had changed since they knew that the facilities belonged to them and vandalism cases had dropped significantly. The awareness that the community based management and community support teams gave to the people had paid off. The community had since formed community based organisations that had been taking care of those facilities. The council had embraced the issue of sustainable solar energy use as they had even started the erection of solar powered traffic lights and street lighting as an extension to the solar powered piped water schemes. The council was moving away from reliance on the power main grids by embracing solar energy.

The project can be replicated fairly easily. Community participation and involvement was the root to sustainable development. Cascading the program to household level also increased the number of people owning the project. The good practice could be amplified by extending it to other sectors of service delivery. The good practice should be incentivized so that people would embrace it even on private lighting systems and awareness should be given on climate change and the use of solar energy as a panacea to climate change.