While Aklima sees herself as a facilitator, Pascaline wants to build her own sanitation marketing business The growing number of female leaders in water, sanitation and hygiene is improving communication with local communities and unleashing new approaches and ideas. On this year’s International Women’s Day, we focus on two of WSUP’s women who are transforming […]
WSUP’s 2021-2022 Annual Report has been launched, showing how our organisation’s work in Southern Africa and Asia has advanced even more, with different initiatives in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in low-income urban areas. It was a particularly important year for WSUP’s activities promoting good WASH services for women and girls. Another highlight was its […]
Our 2021-2022 Annual Report shows the result of WSUP’s activities, benefitting more than 1 million people in the past year, across Africa and South Asia. In the period, we achieved:
618,418 people with improved water access;
580,730 residents with improved sanitation services;
168,454 people with improved access to good hygiene;
and mobilised more than $12 million in additional investment.
Lord Paul Boateng, WSUP’s chairman, wrote:
“In addition to our work with households and families, we are also investing more and more in providing clean water and decent toilets in schools, helping reduce student absences and improving the educational chances for children, particularly girls.”
Ed Mitchell, who in 2022 assumed the position of WSUP’s CEO, writes:
Download resource“Together with our supportive partners, we can take pride in what we’ve done so far, but we also need to raise our sights and ambitions to reach many more people in desperate need.”
It is the end of a major effort and the beginning of a new era. With the conclusion of the five-year Water and Development Alliance (WADA) programme, in three of Madagascar’s biggest cities, the country is ready to build on its legacy to continue improving its water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. WADA comes to […]
Joint article by AMCOW, Speak Up Africa, UNICEF and WSUP. This week’s World Water Forum, taking place in Dakar, Senegal, is a timely reminder of how the world is slipping behind its commitment to achieve universal access to safe sanitation by 2030. Access to basic sanitation and hygiene services is a primary concern globally, with […]
A joint publication by AMCOW, Speak Up Media, UNICEF and WSUP
On the 10th of June, 2021, the African Council of Ministers on Water (AMCOW) launched the African Sanitation Policy Guidelines (ASPG), a new initiative to help improve national and subnational sanitation and hygiene policy across the continent.
The policy guidelines aim to ease the process of resolving country-level enabling environment bottlenecks that stand in the way of African governments in meeting their national, regional, and global sanitation and hygiene obligations. They provide direction in functional policy drafting, broad stakeholder engagement, monitoring, and generic technical content specific to sanitation and hygiene service provision.
This report explains the background to the creation of the ASPG and presents the importance of these policy guidelines. It then outlines examples from across Africa showing how the six parts to the guidelines can be applied:
Sanitation Systems and Services (South Africa)
Hygiene and Behaviour Change (Rwanda)
Institutional Arrangements (Senegal)
Regulation (Zambia)
Capacity Development (South Africa)
Funding and Financing (Chad)
High-level advocacy is key to the success of the ASPG rollout. Engaging senior policymakers in this process is the winning formula of success. Time and resources will be invested in continuous advocacy meetings and a wide stakeholder engagement to ensure no one is left behind during the policy process.The ASPG provides a wide range of resources that requires investing in the various stakeholders’ capacity building. This process presents an excellent opportunity for documenting both the learning and sharing, as part of knowledge management for policy processes.
Previous experiences across the continent clarify that Africa can achieve the indicators of progress outlined in the guidelines because they have been done before, even if only in a few countries. This time around the focus is on increasing the scale of success to the entire continent.
Africa has rightfully and decisively opted to pursue something that its leaders and populations can deliver. With political will and determination to design the right policies towards a common goal, the African Sanitation Policy Guidelines should generate a high level of confidence and certainty amongst the continent’s authorities, summarised by these encouraging words: it can be done.
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While we use World Water Day 2022 to celebrate groundwater and make it visible, two things become clear: the water from aquifers faces a number of different threats, and those who benefit from this source understand well its importance. In Chattogram, Bangladesh, pollution from a badly managed sanitation system has affected the quality of aquifers. […]
Groundwater: a key resource for towns and cities around the world struggling to provide enough water for their thirsty residents. It has many advantages over surface water, as it is often more reliable, nearer to households, less vulnerable to pollution, and more resilient to climate variability. With urban populations in Africa and south Asia continuing […]
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 […]
Our Annual Report shows where, how, and how much WSUP’s work has benefited the communities it serves across Africa and south Asia.
In the year to March 2021, despite global challenging circumstances, WSUP reached:
515,000 people with improved water access
721,000 residents with improved sanitation services;
5.5 million people with improved access to good hygiene;
and mobilised $8 million in additional investment.
Lord Paul Boateng, WSUP’s chairman, says in his opening message:
“As a world leader in research and practical assistance in the market-led delivery of access to urban water, sanitation and hygiene, our efforts are critical to the achievement of SDG 6, clean water and sanitation, and SDG 11, sustainable communities and cities.”
Neil Jeffery, WSUP’s CEO, adds:
“Covid-19 highlighted how vital water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is, how central it can be to combating disease and how WSUP’s expertise is fundamental to overcoming that challenge in urban areas.”
Download WSUP Annual Report 2020-21
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