Impact Story
Snapshot from 2025: Uganda
Making reform stick: building the legal foundations for lasting services
Uganda’s rural water and sanitation sector is undergoing one of its most significant governance shifts in decades, moving from fragmented, volunteer-based maintenance to a professionalised, accountable, and climate-resilient service delivery system.
Throughout 2025, we worked with the Ministry of Water and Environment and district local governments to turn the national Operations & Management (O&M) Framework into practice. A major milestone was the formation and gazetting of District Authorities and Water Boards. Gazetting means formally recognising these bodies in law through publication in the national Gazette, giving them legal status, clear mandates, and the authority to oversee tariffs, contracts, and service regulation. Without it, reforms remain temporary and unenforceable.
We also contributed to three influential national policy documents: the new Sanitation and Hygiene Policy, the WASH National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and the Climate-Resilient WASH in Schools Manual. Our ability to influence these processes was the result of long-term systems leadership. Years of district-level work in Kabarole and Bunyangabu gave us grounded insights into what works, what doesn’t, and why. Global thought leadership on climate-resilient water and sanitation and alignment gave us the credibility to bridge global concepts with local realities and shape national policy direction.
Challenges remain, such as slow gazettement, limited O&M financing, and resistance to tariffs - but Uganda now has the institutional foundation for long-term sustainability.
Blue: partner areas; Orange: scaling areas
“We are working closely with local governments and partners to scale up water coverage and ensure that O&M is embedded from the design stage through to long-term service delivery.”
Eng. Al Hajji Ssentubwe Ahmed, Assistant Commissioner, Infrastructure Operation and Maintenance (IOM), Ministry of Water and Environment
| 63% | water |
| 24% | sanitation |
| 25% | hygiene |
| 10 | staff |
| 14 | projects |
| 1,3 | million euros project revenue |
| 468,425 | population of partner areas |