Financed by USAID through the AfriCap project (African Water Operators Capacity Building Project), ten water testing laboratories will be audited from July 25 and August 20, 2017 by African experts trained under this program.

These water testing laboratories belong to water utilities that are African Water Association (AfWA) members, namely: Cameroon (CDE), Côte d’Ivoire (SODECI & ONEP), Guinea (SEG), Liberia (LWSC), Mali (SOMAGEP), Niger (SEEN), Nigeria (Abuja Water Board), Sierra Leone (GVWCL) and Togo (TdE). In the long term, six laboratories will be identified to benefit from peer-to-peer partnerships with a mentor, either the laboratory of ONEA in Burkina Faso or Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) to implement a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) over a two year period.

For the start of the exploratory audits, TdE received on July 25, 2017 for three days an exploratory audit team composed of the AfriCap Program Coordinator and two auditors from SOMAGEP-SA (Mali) and SONEB (Benin). At the same time, two other auditors from ONEA (Burkina Faso) were in Côte d’Ivoire from July 25 to August 2 to audit SODECI and ONEP. AfriCap is a program implemented by AfWA over a four year period with USD 2 million in financing.

The timetable of audit visits is as follows: