Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) endeavours regularly fail. Sometimes this means that programmes do not achieve their stated aims; other times these failures are setbacks that can be rectified with sufficient reflection and action. In the worst cases, the purported ‘beneficiaries’ of WASH projects are harmed – sometimes even killed – through the unintended consequences borne of admirable intentions. These tales of failure are rarely shared with the wider sector, in part due to a culture of covering up things that go wrong.

This project aims to develop an evidence base regarding how and why field-based WASH professionals in four sub-Saharan African countries believe failures occur, their experiences when discussing them within their organisation and the sector, and how they believe a culture conducive to greater public sharing and learning from failures could be nurtured. Interview questions will be adapted in each country to ensure they are contextually appropriate and up to fifty field-based WASH professionals in each country will be interviewed.

The project aims to generate practical guidance for sharing and learning from failures in the four focus countries, as well as commonalities identified across sub-Saharan Africa more broadly. Ideally, this will result in more successful WASH programmes as sector actors learn from one another and gain insights from the experiences of their colleagues.