Water Utilities Partnership for Capacity Building (in Africa and South Asia)

Timeframe: 1998 - 2002

Partners:

             Water Utility Partnership for Capacity Building in Africa
             Union of African Water Suppliers (UAWS), Abidjan
             Regional Center for Low Cost Water and Sanitation (CREPA),             
             Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
             Training, Research and Networking for Development (TREND), Ghana

This project has benefited from the strong and competent management support from the World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme in Nairobi.

The Water Utility Partnership for Capacity Building in Africa (WUP) is working to strengthen the capacity of utilities to improve the coverage of water supply and sanitation services in Africa through six projects. Two of these projects, on focussing on environmental health and hygiene and the other on building utilities' capacity to serve low-income communities, have been consolidated to form what is now called Project No 5: Strengthening the Capacity of Utilities to Deliver Water and Sanitation Services to Low Income Urban Communities.

Project No.5 aimed to develop a better understanding of the conditions necessary for water and sanitation services to reach low income communities. It was intended to conduct in-depth case studies on particular best practices to learn what is necessary to replicate these practices elsewhere.

WUP Project No. 5 was conceived as a phased action research program to uncover good practices and develop related tools and guiding principles. WUP 5 was carried out in three phases:

- Phase 1 (1998-99) piloted the methodology; the methods to be followed were developed and tested in two participating countries of Zambia and Ethiopia.

- Phase 2 (1999-2000) uncovered and documented practices from nine countries (zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali) leading to the Nairobi workshop (June 2000);

- Phase 3 (2001) synthesized and disseminated principles and selected “good practices” for extending WSS services to the urban poor through the Abidjan workshop (November 2001) and the Good Practice Document which was produced and the Toolkit. (2003). Both the good practice document and the toolkit are available on CD but also on the WUP website.

The main output of the project is the Good Practice document and the toolkit on services to the urban poor. The document brings together the experiences on how utilities have been working to provide services to the urban poor. The Good Practice document was produced in both English and French. One thousand copies in each language was produced and have been distributed to each water utility.

The toolkit is meant to assist utilities design better ways of serving the urban poor. It is a CD based and is also available on the WUP website.