News & Impact Stories

The Government of South Sudan is encouraging further inter-ministerial co-operation to improve water, sanitation and hygiene services for the country’s communities – a move which has been strongly welcomed by key sector stakeholders. As part of the preparatory process for SWA’s 2022 Sector Ministers’ Meeting (SMM), South Sudan’s ministry for water and irrigation arranged collaborative dialogue with six other ministries, covering health, housing, education, environment, gender, and humanitarian affairs. SWA is working with South Sudan to encourage engagement with high-level decision makers, and

SWA continues to support the Government of Nepal to further its efforts to bring water, sanitation and hygiene stakeholders together, to develop a common vision and commitments to move the country forward. The focus on multi-stakeholder action is one of several significant positive steps for the sector – including, for example, the creation of a strong Management Information System (MIS), which was developed by the Ministry of Water Supply. The SWA Framework inspired the indicators used in Nepal’s MIS, which is now used by all levels of government to monitor progress and inform policy design

In Côte d’Ivoire, financing has been secured for a five-year project which will deliver water and sanitation services to more than 50,000 households in rural communities. Officials from the country’s water ministry first learned about the funding opportunity at an SWA seminar, which discussed how to prepare project proposals and find suitable donors, said Hélène Bragori, Director of Rural Sanitation at the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. Ms Bragori added that SWA went on to provide significant technical help to develop the bid, which was successfully submitted to the World Bank. The

Indonesia’s water, sanitation and hygiene sector is benefitting from an innovative financing scheme that has contributed to considerable gains for the country in access to both water and sanitation services. SWA’s ‘Building Blocks’ helped to set the context for Indonesia’s last two strategies for achieving universal access to water and sanitation services. The strategies focus on sector planning, capacity, coordination, and monitoring, as well as innovative approaches to sector financing. At the centre of Indonesia’s current strategy is a significant expansion of ‘NUWAS’, Indonesia’s

An innovative finance scheme has been developed as part of strengthening Cambodia’s water, sanitation and hygiene sector. The scheme includes incentive payments totaling nearly US$10 million to project implementers, if the country eliminates open defecation by 2025. It comes as part of Cambodia’s significant efforts to strengthen its sector, founded on a new National Action Plan. The national plan is built around key SWA principles, particularly on improving cross-sectoral cooperation and seeking new options for closing national sector finance gaps. It forges strong cross-sectoral links with

Niger’s ‘common financing mechanism’ has created a robust institutional arrangement, which has helped to increase confidence in WASH sector investment. The principles of SWA’s ‘Collaborative Behaviours’ are the conceptual foundation for the mechanism, which allows partners to reduce risk by pooling resources, as well as harmonizing sector financing procedures with national budgeting procedures. Niger’s experience with the SWA Collaborative Behaviours spans several years, as the country was involved in their design in 2014. Since then, the country has worked to integrate the SWA Collaborative