United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Partnering for healthier cities
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and WSUP work together on two of USAID’s flagship WASH programmes.
The Water and Development Alliance (WADA), to expand access to improved drinking water and sanitation services for the urban poor in Madagascar and Zambia; and the West Africa Sanitation Service Delivery (SSD), through developing and testing scalable, market-based models that contribute to structural change within Ghana’s sanitation sector.
In addition, WSUP Advisory is providing technical support to USAID and the Government of India in a knowledge partnership to develop its water, sanitation and hygiene capacity from national to city level, and supporting the private sector to achieve Swachh Bharat Mission goals.
Improving access to safe water and sanitation for Madagascar’s urban residents
Thanks to support from the Water and Development Alliance (WADA), a partnership between USAID and The Coca-Cola Foundation , WSUP’s WADA project in Madagascar is building a water-secure future.
Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in Africa and is urbanising more than twice as fast as the rest of the world. Approximately one-third of the total population already lives in urban areas. Water supply and sanitation coverage are serious challenges. Diarrhoeal disease, which often results from a lack of sanitation and unclean drinking water, is the second most lethal illness among children under the age of five. The lack of significant investments over a long period, coupled with limited institutional capacity, has exacerbated the challenges of improving access to sustainable and affordable water and sanitation services in Antananarivo and other cities, particularly among low-income populations.
In response to these challenges, WADA Madagascar project focuses on building the capacity of national institutions and local communities to effectively deliver and manage water and sanitation services. WSUP works with JIRAMA (the utility), national and city governments, and local communities to provide water for low-income areas with limited water services. These efforts will improve people’s lives by increasing the number of hours and quantity of water supplied each day, improving water quality and pressure by building new infrastructure, and finding and repairing leaks in current systems to reduce water loss.
Video: March 2019 – 360-degree film: Madagascar’s urban water challenge
Blog: April 2018 – Improving access to water and sanitation for 450,000 Malagasy people
Video: June 2019 – The Leak Squad: preserving Antananarivo’s most precious resource
Capacity building in Visakhapatnam
WSUP Advisory provided technical support to USAID and the Government of India in a knowledge partnership to develop its water, sanitation and hygiene capacity from national to city level and supporting the private sector to achieve Swachh Bharat Mission goals.
Many cities in India do not meet basic sanitation standards and around 13% of households have no access to latrine facilities. The Government of India has pledged to improve sanitation across the country, and has set up the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), also known as the Clean India Mission, to achieve this goal. SBM is a national commitment to provide sanitation and toilet facilities for all 4,041 Indian cities by 2019. As well as building toilets, it addresses a broad range of issues including weak infrastructure, lack of management and capacity within the country’s water, sanitation and hygiene sector and poor awareness of good hygiene practices. SBM also provides good governance and policy frameworks to support the transformation of the sector.
Blog: September 2018 – How to improve sanitation across an entire city: the case of Visakhapatnam
Report: September 2016 – Sanitation mapping, Visakhapatnam – Data Analysis Report