Harness early gains to generate greater commitment to critical reforms. Reform interventions should leverage strategies to build commitment to reform goals, such as supporting activities that lead to visible, tangible results for consumers. Therefore, early-stage interventions should have a clear, near-term path to positive impacts on service delivery. More general management interventions may not lead to desired results quickly enough to build support and commitment for reform goals, especially where improvements are not visible to external stakeholders. In Malawi, conditions to clear ESCOM’s balance sheet of debt and increase tariffs early in the Compact were critical to providing space for ESCOM’s turnaround and sector reforms in general. This shows that the use of targeted conditions can be useful when they result in sufficiently large impacts to offset the challenge of pushing the conditions through. However, the positive benefits of these conditions being fulfilled were not sufficient to bring about anticipated improvements in service delivery that were visible from the perspective of customers.
Lesson Learned