Sustainability Assessment of Community-Based Water Supply Projects in Sudan using Sustainability Index and Multivariate Analysis

In the current paper, sustainability assessment framework was designed using a set of multidimensional indicators to assess and monitor eight community-based water supply management in four different states in Sudan. The assessment framework consisted of site visits, a systematic secondary information collection, and analysis approach and documents reviews. A sustainability index was developed based on the projects stakeholder’s discussions and the dataset were further analyzed using multivariate analysis techniques. The study revealed that 89% of the implemented water projects had low sustainable performance although they are considered as young projects (1-4 years age projects). According to Principal component analysis (PCA), 39% of the low sustainability performance of the projects was mostly related to the poor organizational and financial capacity of the communities and poor post-implementation governmental and/or external agencies involvement and support in terms of monitoring, capacity building facilities, and financial support. There is a strong need to develop post implementation strategies and models and mechanisms to backup community-based water projects technically as well as financially to assure the sustainability and verify the project implementation goals.