The African Water Facility announced a new investment case to mobilize resources to finance its revised strategy for 2017-2025. Based on an updated vision, the African Water Facility is set to improve the quality of life for rural and urban communities in Africa by 2025. The African Water Facility requires €62.15 million ($70.64 million) by end of 2025, at an average of €12.43 million ($14.13 million) annually over a five-year period.
The fully funded strategy will enable the African Water Facility, hosted at the African Development Bank, to deliver significant interventions across the continent in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector, also known as WASH.
” The African Water Facility secured renewed support from Austria, Denmark, the Nordic Development Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the African Development Bank. However, additional financing is required to fully realize the revised Strategy for 2017-2025,” said Osward Chanda, Director, Water Development and Sanitation Department at the African Development Bank. “This new mobilization drive is the Facility’s call for partners with conviction of the needs to support the speedy delivery of more water and sanitation services to vulnerable communities across the continent,” Chanda added.
More than 770 million people in Africa lack access to clean and reliable water and sanitation services. A fully funded African Water Facility will enable:
- an additional 2.58 million people to gain access to a climate-resilient and safely managed water supply
- an additional 2.39 million people to have access to basic sanitation facilities, of which 610,000 people will have access to safely managed sanitation facilities
- up to €500 million ($563.6 million) in downstream investment for project implementation
- from the climate change perspective, to improve water resources management frameworks
To achieve these results, the African Water Facility is launching a proactive approach in resource mobilization. “We are working to secure at least two new funding agreements by the end of 2022. We plan to use the new grants to leverage significant downstream investment estimated at €500 million ($563.6 million) through our project preparation and investment promotion funding windows by the end of 2025,” said Mtchera Chirwa, the African Water Facility’s new coordinator.
The African Water Facility aims to continue working with its current Donors and to continue dialogue on them increasing their support to the Facility, buy also looking to double its current donor base by the end of 2023 having already identified a range of new potential partners. The Facility will now engage with these new potential partners, notably at the World Water Forum in Dakar and through funding dialogues to be set up with interested partners during the second semester of 2022.
The Facility’s work notably aligns with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to access to clean water and sanitation, to gender equality, to ending poverty, to climate action, to ending hunger and to creating sustainable cities and communities in Africa by 2025.
