In 1971, the Government of Tanzania declared a 20 year water supply programme which stipulated that by the year 1991, every household should have access to a safe, potable and dependable water supply within a reasonable distance of 400 meters.

Following this policy decision, a number of bilateral and multilateral agencies extended their support to enable the Government to achieve the goal. In 1986, a review of the water programme revealed that only an average of 42 % coverage had been attained. In Kagera region, the coverage was around 10 % and the target was then extended to the year 2002. The poor performance was attributed to a number of factors, namely inadaquate funding, inadaquate skilled manpower, lack of working facilities, non involvement of the beneficiaries, poor operation and maintenance of the completed schemes, lack of standardization and non-availabilty of spareparts.

In the early nineties, the Belgian Government contributed to the programme through a Belgian NGO (VIC-Vlaams Internationaal Centrum) and 45 boreholes were drilled in shallow formations. In 1994, the Belgian Government decided to increase its support to the programme through the Kagera Community Development Programme (KCDP). Complementary equipment was bought for a total amount of 23 Mio Bef in order to drill in deep and rocky formations and 30 boreholes were drilled in the district of Karagwe, the most affected by the influx of refugees from Rwanda. Since then, the equipment has been used by other donors (i.e. JICA-Japanese Cooperation) to be finally handed over to the Tanzanian Ministry of Water in 1998.