As part of the Water and Development Congress held in Kigali from December 10th -14th, 2023, AfWASA took part on December 11, in a session on the challenges of water quality and the effectiveness of water treatment methods. On this occasion, the peer-to-peer partneships of its capacity Building Programme (Africap) funding by USAID was presented as key to  improving water quality in Africa.

The presentation was made by Gilles Djagoun, AfWASA Senior Water Program Coordinator, in charge of the Africap programme. He explained that the main objective of the programmes is to support AfWASA to achieve its broad mandate in capacity building of African WASH stakeholders through among others, dissemination of knowledge and Peer-to-peer learning partnership. He highlighted the successful experiences of peer-to-peer partnerships between high-performance water quality analysis and control laboratories (mentors) and those that are less so (mentees), which are contributing to a significant improvement in water quality management in Africa.

Several activities are conducted within the framework of the program, including trainings, laboratory audits, benchmarking visits, support in producing a laboratory management manual, and twinning and drafting performance improvement plans. Participating laboratories are from Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Niger, Mali, Togo, and Burkina Faso. They took part in several activities, including

In terms of results, the project has led to a clear improvement in the management of the above-mentioned laboratories, a positive impact on the quality of water, the construction of reference laboratories, and the achievement of iso certification for some of them.

Through this program, AfWASA is demonstrating its commitment to supporting the Africa Water Vision 2025, which calls for "equitable and sustainable use of water for socio-economic development".

It should be noted that the USAID-funded AfriCap program runs from 2015-2023.