Mid-Term Review of Sanitation Project in Egypt

Financed by a loan from the World Bank, the Government of Egypt wants to provide sustainable access to adequate and affordable sanitation services in a program area of three Governorates in the Delta region (namely Beheira, Kafr El-Sheik, and Gharbeya) under the Integrated Sanitation and Sewerage Infrastructure Project (ISSIP), Phase I. The aim of the project is to contribute to sustainable improvements of sanitation and environmental conditions for the resident communities, and the water quality in the selected drainage basins within the served areas.

The loan was complemented with a consultancy mandate funded by SECO to provide project management assistance and technical assistance in the infrastructure provision, and to train the three water and sanitation service providers in the Governorates on service provision and infrastructure maintenance.

For the evaluation of this consultancy mandate, EBP joined forces with Ecopsis SA and Egyptian experts. The objective of the Mid-Term Review was to develop improvement measures for the consultancy mandate and ISSIP towards the intended project impact. The Mid-Term Review took place from June to November 2013.

The review team assessed to what extent the capacities of the national and local public institutions to plan, design, construct and operate the sanitation investments are being enhanced, and whether the consultant mandate is being implemented correctly and efficiently according to his terms of reference. The review team identified potential lessons for the funding and implementing partners, and formulated recommendations in the form of a series of improvement measures for the project to achieve its goals.

The Mid-Term Review assessed the status of implementation using the OECD/DAC evaluation guidelines on relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the actions undertaken by the consultant, and analysed the investments done in the frame of the ISSIP.