When a Pilot Ends but the Need Doesn’t: Why “Successful” Projects Still Fail Communities
By RCN Ghana · 16 February 2026
By: Fauzia Aliu
I sit in my kitchen with a household water filter that once worked beautifully for my family.
It is convenient, easy to clean, and gave us confidence in the safety of our drinking water.
Today, it is unusable—not because it failed, but because I cannot find a replacement cartridge.
The filter was introduced through an NGO pilot project. The project ended. The technology remained. But the supply of replacement cartridges did not. When I followed up, I was told the full filter units are still available for sale, but replacement cartridges are no longer stocked locally. I found them online in South Africa, but the seller does not ship to Ghana. On Amazon, they exist—but at a cost and through payment systems inaccessible to most households here.
So now, I am left with a product that is too valuable to throw away and impossible to use.
And I cannot stop thinking about the hundreds of households in communities who received this same filter through the pilot.
What happens when their cartridges expire?
This Is Not a Technical Failure—It’s a Systems Failure
Pilot projects are meant to test ideas, generate learning, and inform scale. But too often, they stop at proof of concept and never cross into proof of sustainability.
We celebrate numbers:
Households reached
Units distributed
Short-term improvements
What we under-invest in is what actually keeps solutions alive:
Supply chains for spare parts
Local availability of consumables
Affordability beyond donor support
After-sales systems and accountability
A water filter without a replacement cartridge is not a partial success. It is a broken system. A break in the value chain and a loss in development return on investment.
From a Community Perspective, This Feels Like Abandonment
From a community perspective, this experience feels very different from how it is framed in project reports.
Households are not testing an innovation—they are making real decisions about their health, time, and safety. When a technology…
I sit in my kitchen with a household water filter that once worked beautifully for my family.
It is convenient, easy to clean, and gave us confidence in the safety of our drinking water.
Today, it is unusable—not because it failed, but because I cannot find a replacement cartridge.
The filter was introduced through an NGO pilot project. The project ended. The technology remained. But the supply of replacement cartridges did not. When I followed up, I was told the full filter units are still available for sale, but replacement cartridges are no longer stocked locally. I found them online in South Africa, but the seller does not ship to Ghana. On Amazon, they exist—but at a cost and through payment systems inaccessible to most households here.
So now, I am left with a product that is too valuable to throw away and impossible to use.
And I cannot stop thinking about the hundreds of households in communities who received this same filter through the pilot.
What happens when their cartridges expire?
This Is Not a Technical Failure—It’s a Systems Failure
Pilot projects are meant to test ideas, generate learning, and inform scale. But too often, they stop at proof of concept and never cross into proof of sustainability.
We celebrate numbers:
Households reached
Units distributed
Short-term improvements
What we under-invest in is what actually keeps solutions alive:
Supply chains for spare parts
Local availability of consumables
Affordability beyond donor support
After-sales systems and accountability
A water filter without a replacement cartridge is not a partial success. It is a broken system. A break in the value chain and a loss in development return on investment.
From a Community Perspective, This Feels Like Abandonment
From a community perspective, this experience feels very different from how it is framed in project reports.
Households are not testing an innovation—they are making real decisions about their health, time, and safety. When a technology…
