GS1247 VPA 93 Improved Kitchen Regimes Multi-Country PoA - Dowa & Kasungu Boreholes, Malawi

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard borehole water-supply project in Malawi has confirmed additionality and no reversal events, but is undermined by an extraordinary volume of material findings (over 80 items) and 19 outstanding corrective actions that point to systemic data-quality and internal-consistency problems. The 0% leakage deduction is contradicted by the monitoring report's 5% figure, and the fNRB method is reported inconsistently across documents, raising over-crediting risk. Over-delivery relative to the pro-rata expectation is a positive signal, but the sheer number of unresolved discrepancies makes it difficult to have high confidence in the verified figures.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Over 80 material findings and 19 corrective actions remain open, spanning calculation errors, missing evidence, parameter inconsistencies, and documentation gaps across the verification and monitoring reports
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% in the 2025 verification report but 5% in the 2025 monitoring report for the same period — an unexplained contradiction that undermines the leakage assessment
• ⚠fNRB method is reported as 'local field' in the verification report but 'national default' in the monitoring report, and the fNRB value itself was revised from 0.95 to 0.87 during corrective actions, indicating the baseline non-replacement benefit was not stable
• ⚠The project name references 'Improved Kitchen Regimes' while the applied methodology is for Safe Drinking Water Supplies (ERSDWS v1.0), and the sector classification is listed as 'industrial' — a fundamental classification inconsistency that raises questions about the project's actual scope
• ⚠The 2024 verification report shows a verified ERR of 99,056 while the 2025 verification report shows 9,049 for what appears to be the same VPA, a ten-fold discrepancy that is not explained in the available documents

Credit Vintages