The African Water and Sanitation Association (AfWASA) has established a €5 million Africa Water Sanitation Academy, AWASA, enable the continent to the attain Sustainable Development Goal 6 of the United Nations by 2030.
The group launched the official presentation of the project on Tuesday in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire.
Speaking at the launch, the Chairman of the Strategic Capacity Building Committee of AfWASA, Prof Hamanth Kasan said Africa was still lagging behind as regards the SDG 6 and lack the human capital in the water and sanitation sector.
Kasan in his presentation which was also part of the 21st Congress of the Association explained that the Academy was to boost Africa’s achievements in access to water and sanitation.
Kasan said they are working to provide capacity building to all African utility experts to speed up water and service provision towards achieving the goals.
“We are lacking capacity, technical skills, management, IT, communication skills and gender diversity. we need to capacitate our people to the best skill in the world. So that they can provide water to people that never had it and sanitation services.”
Stating that education was power, he said both technology and human resources were very critical but technology without human resources cannot work.
”So where there are many technologies in the world we need human resources to operate these technologies and use them to make the differences we need both.”
He also pointed out for the need for effective governance system to achieve their set goals.
He said to make more impacts, a panel of experts would be set up to ensure that the curriculum of the Academy is Africanised.
”We will tailor the curriculum to the needs of the different region in Africa
”We are targeting all the utility experts, the staff from the leadership and management levels to operators down to the bottom level, communication experts, and IT across the board. This is not only for managers and leaders because we need the skills for all the people. The training will be diversifying across the value chain.”he added.
He announced that the the pilot stage has been tested and now waiting for the conclusion of the registration process as well as the establishment of the organisation in Uganda.
On his part, the President of AfWASA, Dr Silver Mugisha who stated that they require a total of €5 million to run the Academy, expressed optimism about the success of the project.
Mugisha said the project was conceived in 2008 following the lack of trained people in the leadership of African’s water and sanitation sector, hence, the need for a vehicle to bring leadership development competence for water utility practitioners.
He said to reduce financial gaps, the Academy will start with funds from donors and grants for the first five years after which it will start functioning on its own.
The AfWASA president explained further that the first test phase would be conducted in two countries of Rwanda and Sierra lone after which the results from the two countries will be used for other parts of the continent.
“A huge chuck of the €5 million needed for the first five years will be from donors. We have received quiet a lot of money from donors. But the 5 million euros will be used to have the academy up and running for the next five years until the academy will break even and will not be depending on donors’” he started.
Presenting the objectives of the project, the Director of Programmes, Africa Water Association and Sanitation, AfWASA, Dr Simeon Kenfack, said it would be contributing to decision-making in the water sector, mainly through classroom training, the organisation of seminars, colloquia and symposiums among others.