WSUP has launched its 2020-2021 Annual Report, presenting our operations and impact in the year up to March 2021.
Through work in our core countries Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Zambia, plus our emerging presence in Uganda and consultancy work in Malawi and Cambodia, we were proud to improve the lives of 6.7 million people.
As a result of our work:
- A total of 515,000 people benefitted from improved water access.
- Safe sanitation services reached 721,900 residents.
- Access to hygiene was improved for 5.5 million people.
- $8 million in additional investment was mobilised.
The year 2020-2021 was WSUP’s first under its new Business Plan, and the Annual Report shares some of our work carried under the five Strategic Goals during the period. Below is a brief digest of what has been done under each of them.
Strategic Goal 1: Integrated City Development
Water access, drainage, health, street design and solid waste management are inextricably linked. Sanitation facilities cannot be emptied if poor road access makes it impossible to reach them; poor access makes it impossible to lay water pipes; and poor drainage systems means septic tanks and pit latrines are affected by flooding. An integrated approach is vital for reaching the poorest areas in cities.
WSUP has been finding and developing new opportunities to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Central to this are the positive relationships we have built with utilities, governments and community leaders.
“By integrating our work into the slum upgrading work, we have reached 4,000 residents in one village alone with safe, resilient and sustainable water and sanitation services,” writes Eden Mati, WSUP’s Country Programme Manager in Kenya, about work that has been implemented in the Mukuru slum in Nairobi.
In poorly designed low-income communities in Maputo, Mozambique, water and sanitation cannot be offered effectively if other needs are not addressed jointly or beforehand. “The lack of street planning means the latrines and tanks cannot be safely or easily emptied,” says Tunisio Meneses Camba, WSUP’s Country Programme Manager, Mozambique.
Strategic Goal 2: Stronger Service Providers
The second strategic goal focuses on strengthening and expanding our technical and business support to utilities, municipalities and water and sanitation enterprises.
Providers of water and sanitation services struggle with rapidly expanding unplanned urban settlements, and many face challenges in how best to remedy that. These challenges are amplified by poor infrastructure and water lost to leaks and theft. By offering technical expertise, through its Utility Strengthening Framework or delivering targeted support, WSUP looks at how to drive innovation in technology, service delivery models and business design.
In Ghana, that has already been a reality through the work done with The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), as Frank Romeo Kettey, Country Programme Manager in Ghana, explains. “We’ve provided training and capacity building to the utility to ensure they can continue to manage these services over the long-term.”
A similar approach has guided efforts in Zambia. “Our programme in Livingstone has focussed on the drought that Zambia is experiencing, and particularly building the capacity of the utility, Southern Water & Sewerage Company (SWSC) through WSUP’s Utility Strengthening Framework,” writes Reuben Sipuma, Country Programme Manager in Zambia.
Strategic goal 3: Enhanced Partnerships
WSUP’s third goal for the period of 2021-2025 is to seek out and build partnerships to accelerate urban water, sanitation, and hygiene provision at scale.
That has been particularly important in work related to policies. “WSUP has formed a close partnership with AMCOW around the development of the African Sanitation Policy Guidelines (ASPG), a major new initiative to help push forward the development of national sanitation policies across the continent,” says Kariuki Mugo, Director of WASH Sector Support.
In Bangladesh, Country Programme Manager Abdus Shaheen highlights how central the partnership approach has been in the work WSUP has been doing alongside the local garment industry. “Many of the factory workers live in nearby low-income communities with no access to clean water, safe sanitation, and handwashing facilities, exposed to waterborne diseases,” he says.
WSUP has been working in Dhaka with global lifestyle apparel companies Kontoor Brands, Inc. and VF Corporation to develop WASH improvements both in factories and in surrounding communities.
Strategic goal 4: Effective Policies and Regulations
The fourth goal in our Business Plan is all about driving transformation within the urban water, sanitation, and hygiene sector through rigorous research, data-driven learning, dissemination, and influencing. WSUP works with national and local policy makers to recognise water and sanitation as essential services for all, with clear mandates and accountability processes in place.
A good example is WSUP Advisory’s work in Malawi. UNICEF has contracted WSUP Advisory to provide technical assistance to both Lilongwe City Council (LCC) and Lilongwe Water Board (LWB). As Jane Olley, Technical Manager at WSUP Advisory explains, this effort has been about “defining roles and responsibilities of each in the delivery of sanitation services and developing a formal business plan to manage human waste.”
In Madagascar, those principles have been applied in our work with schools and local communities, in partnership with Dubai Cares, with the support of the UAE Water Aid Foundation (Suqia). “The research relies on identifying implementation and capacity bottlenecks from community all the way up to the national level,” writes Sylvie Ramanantsoa, Country Programme Manager in Madagascar.
Strategic goal 5: Increased Scale
WSUP’s fifth strategic goal is around scaling up in new locations, to bring improvements in WASH services to more people who need it.
SWEEP is WSUP’s ground-breaking model for collecting sanitation waste from under-served communities so that it can be safely treated, and remains the only sanitation service in Bangladesh that is both affordable to low-income urban customers, and profitable to deliver. “In the last year alone, we took SWEEP from four enterprises operating in three cities, to 11 enterprises across three cities and five municipalities,” writes Habibur Rahman, WSUP’s Sanitation Lead in Bangladesh.
In Uganda, WSUP is building a new presence which is currently focused around support from our consultancy arm WSUP Advisory to one of the main regional utilities, the Mid-Western Umbrella Authority, following its creation in 2017. The work is funded by the Conrad N Hilton Foundation.
“The Umbrella Authority (UA) is currently managing water supply systems for 62 towns organised into 15 branches, and we are supporting 3 ‘model branches’ to develop best practice for the entire UA,” says Philip Oyamo, WSUP’s Resident Programme Manager in Uganda.
Top image: Student washing their hands in Nakuru County, Kenya.