Organised by the Centre Africain pour l’Eau Potable et l’Assainissement (CREPA), this meeting will focus on the need to improve investment in the water and sanitation sector in Africa. About 200 participants are expected from development organisations, bilateral and multi-lateral groups, civil society organisations as well as governments.
The four-day meeting will include an African Workshop on the pricing of water and sanitation services and sanitation, a ministerial dialogue, a round table of donors, and the launch of an African Forum on innovative local solutions in the field of hygiene, sanitation and drinking water supply.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf talking with journalist Rose George in April 2011. Photo: Shout-Africa
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is one of three women who were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Mrs Sirleaf became Africa’s first female elected head of state in 2005, following the end of Liberia’s 14-year civil war which left 250,000 people dead. She shares US$ 1.5 million prize money with Liberian Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen.
National stakeholders in Liberia are currently developing the Liberia Compact, under the framework developed by the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) initiative. President Johnson-Sirleaf received the draft compact at the end of a Joint Multi-donor Mission on sanitation and water that took place in Liberia from April 27-May 3, 2011. Ahead of the mission Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf reaffirmed her government’s support to the WASH sector in an interview with journalist Rose George (author of the Big Necessity).
Mrs Sirleaf (72) will be competing with Winston Tubman in a presidential runoff election scheduled to be held on 8 November 2011.
Former US president Jimmy Carter says US$ 100 million is needed to finally eradicate Guinea worm disease. The UK has pledged a third of this amount if other donors are prepared to cough up the rest.
Dr. Donald Hopkins, vice president for Health Programs at The Carter Center, shows South Sudanese children how to prevent Guinea worm disease when they visit their local water source. Photo: Carter Center/ L. Gubb
Since the Carter Centre took up the cause in 1986, the disease has been reduced by more than 99 per cent. The majority of the remaining cases (98%) are from South Sudan, while Mali and Ethiopia have each reported less than 10 cases so far in 2011 and there was an isolated outbreak in Chad.
In 1995 Carter personally negotiated a six-month ceasefire between northern and southern Sudan, in a successful attempt to reach remote villages where Guinea worm disease was endemic.
Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis or dracontiasis) can be prevented through heath education, the provision of cloth filters for drinking water and larvicides. The Carter Center’s goal is to stop transmission of the disease worldwide before 2015 and ensure World Health Organisation (WHO) certification within three years. This would make it the second human disease, after small pox, ever to be eradicated in human history.
One out of three rural water supply systems in developing countries doesn’t function at all or performs far below its promised level. IRC’s Triple-S (Sustainable Services at Scale) initiative has put together a web resource to help those involved in financing, planning or implementing rural water supply projects or providing services. The website brings together the latest thinking on creating water services that last, including results from Triple-S work in Ghana and Uganda. It covers key elements such as monitoring, financial planning, institutional models, and capacity building for service providers and local government. Here you’ll find tools, concepts, case studies, videos, cartoons, and more.
The International Islamic Relief Organization of Saudi Arabia (IIROSA) has constructed wells to provide drinking water for residents of several Somali villages facing water scarcity. The project benefitted 50,000 families displaced by the country’s severe drought. The IIROSA also provided 35 water tankers to Somalis in the West Kasmayo region and sent food deliveries to displaced people in remote areas of the country.
Workers in many clothing and textile factories in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal are denied proper sanitation facilities, a trade union survey has found.
Workers were not supplied with toilet paper and being forced to use pieces of fabric, SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU) secretary Chris Gina said. [...].
“Workers are expected to place these fabric off-cuts in bags or boxes next to the toilet… which are often only removed once a week, resulting in filthy, smelly, and unhygienic conditions,” he said in a statement.
“At almost all companies that we surveyed workers are not supplied with toilet paper.”
Factories that did supply toilet paper, made workers pay for it and deducted the costs from their weekly wages.
Political stability has heavily influenced progress in improving access to water supply and sanitation services with low-income stable countries outperforming low-income fragile and resource-rich countries. ”This breaks with the common perception that access to sanitation and water increases with GDP”, says Senior Financial Specialist Dominick de Waal, lead author of a new report [1] by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).
The report, commissioned by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), maps progress in water supply and sanitation of 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. WSP carried out the country studies together with the African Development Bank in close partnership with UNICEF, WHO, and the 32 governments.
African ministers have committed to do what they can ‘in our own back yard’ by using local finance for sanitation rather than depend on hand-outs. They were following the advice of President Kagame of Rwanda who opened AfricaSan 3, the Third African Sanitation and Hygiene Conference, which was held in Kigali from 19-21 July 2011. Hosted by the Government of Rwanda and the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), the conference attracted 900 people from 67 countries, including 23 African Ministers and deputy Ministers [1].
The aim of AfricaSan 3 was to “put Africa back on track to meet the sanitation MDG”. Civil society groups attending the conference said that the high level of participation and engagement shown by African Governments offered cause for optimism. However, much still needs to be done as just four countries in Sub Saharan Africa are currently on-track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for sanitation. The single biggest challenge identified at the conference was funding, as there had been little or no progress towards the agreed target of allocating 0.5% of GDP to sanitation [2].
A major outcome of AfricaSan 3 was that 35 countries were developing national sanitation action plans. They have agreed to hold six monthly reviews of agreed actions over the next 2 years to be reviewed by sector leaders and submitted to the AMCOW AfricaSan Task Force [1].
RNW Africa (Hilversum)-Cholera cases have soared in the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent weeks, the UN said on Friday, bringing the number of people infected in the year-long outbreak to 22,000 with 584 deaths.
Walk4Water (Chicago, IL)-Walk4Water, a non-profit organization committed to raising awareness and funds for clean water in developing countries, is set to embark on a two year, 7,000 mile mission across the continent to achieve their goal.
Africa & Europe in Partnership (Addis Ababa)-The African Union Commission is seeking proposals for research focusing on the following thematic priorities articulated in Africa's Science and Technology Consolidated Plan of Action (CPA) and its Lighthouse Projects: (a) Post-harvest and Agriculture, (b) Renewable and Sustainable Energy, and (c) Water a […]
Radio Dabanga (Hilversum)-A camp leader at Square 7 in Kalma internally displaced persons camp in South Darfur has denied the statements made by a camp resident on Tuesday that the government reduced the share of fuel granted to Oxfam to transport water.
Heritage (Monrovia)-President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has finally signed the much talked about Liberia WASH Compact which was developed at the Multi Donor Conference on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) held at the S.K.D Spokes Complex in Paynesville, outside Monrovia last year May. The Liberia WASH Compact is a product of the Sanitation and Water for All ( […]
Daily Trust (Abuja)-The Gombe State government has awarded contracts worth about N4.5 billion for the execution of projects that are aimed at tackling water shortage and gully erosion in Gombe metropolis and environs.
Daily Trust (Abuja)-Special Adviser to the Ekiti State Governor on Infrastructure and Public Utilities Mr. Kayode Jegede, has said that efforts of past administrations to improve water supply in the state failed because of alleged poor implementation and politicization of the programme.
New Times (Kigali)-The Minister of Health, Dr Agnes Binagwaho, has issued a three-month ultimatum to all hospitals in the country to have constructed enough toilets or face heavy punitive measures.
The Herald (Harare)-It is disheartening to note that typhoid cases continue to rise in Harare, though the cases have all been reported in Kuwadzana. Typhoid is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with faecal matter from an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella typhi. The pathogen […]
New Times (Kigali)-The Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) has embarked on an exercise to help cattle keepers in the Eastern Province get constant supply of clean water.
Mauritius plans to privatise its water sector, as rains become rare, and century-old pipes continue to leak almost 50 percent of the water available, added to waste by the population, mismanagement and over-consumption.
A multi-million dollar iron-ore reprocessing plant in the northern part of Swaziland, owned by Indian mining company Salgaocar, is threatening the water security of local communities and even the country's capital city, Mbabane.
Efforts to establish water as an agenda item in its own right in climate change negotiations are gaining momentum in Durban, South Africa. Water experts say doing this will lead to a greater focus on developing policy, and attract more resources into the water sector through adaptation programmes.
The Southern Africa Development Community wants water to be tabled as a standalone item on climate change negotiations – describing it as too important to leave on the periphery.
Life in Bwaise – a slum on the outskirts of the capital of Uganda – has never been easy. But increasingly erratic rains over the last three years have brought constant floods to the former swampland. Residents who can afford to are moving out, leaving the poorest – often single mothers and grandmothers – behind.
While Africa has successfully avoided conflict over shared water courses, it will need greater diplomacy to keep the peace as new research warns that climate change will have an effect on food productivity.
