The African Water Facility (AWF) has offered the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) a €2 million grant to establish a monitoring and reporting system for the water sector in Africa. The project is in line with the Africa Water Vision call for action for the creation of a sustainable system for monitoring and sharing of information on all aspects of water use in the continent.
Its objective is to develop a harmonized national, basin and regional water sector monitoring and reporting system in Africa to enable AMCOW to report annually to the African Union (AU) Summit on the state of water in Africa. The project will also assist AMCOW and AU to establish a data management system that will drive continuous credible reporting on the sector on the state of water development and use for decision making at the level of Heads of State and Governments.
"AWF will continue to catalyze actions to propel the provision of water and safe sanitation to more African populations and to actualize more efficient development and management of our water resources. And one of the surest ways of doing this is to develop an efficient system of monitoring and evaluating what we do," said Akissa Bahri, the AWF Coordinator at the signing of the contract at the just-concluded AWF Governing Council meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe.
To AMCOW Executive Secretary, Bai Mass Taal, "This project will enable us promote greater country accountability on Sharm el-Sheikh Commitments made by our Heads of States on water and sanitation. However, the greater beneficiaries will be the people of Africa who are going to benefit from greater access to drinking water and safe sanitation as direct fallouts from such increased accountability actions by Governments and other actors in the sector."
The project to be implemented by AMCOW Secretariat over a period of 24 months consists of four main components: (i) preparation of a harmonized reporting system and format; (ii) preparation of the annual reports based on harmonized system (iii) capacity building of AUC and AMCOW including establishment of data management and reporting platform as well as training and (iv) project management.