The meeting of AfWA’s Scientific and Technical Council took place from 19 to 24 November 2018 at the Kempinski Hotel in Djibouti under the theme "Technological innovations to improve the performance and efficiency of water and sanitation operators in Africa. »

After the opening ceremony and the various technical conferences on the first day, the following days were devoted to the groups work. According to their specialties the 120 delegates, were divided into the 4 specialized committees to discuss the subjects contained in their different roadmaps.

At the end of their work, they made recommendations; the main ones were presented by the SCT’s President to the Executive Committee. These include, among others:

• Reducing the opening ceremony, by limiting it to three speeches (host company, AfWA, host country official) and the inauguration of the Open Day;
• The publication of a press release after the end of the work;
• The limitation to 4, the number of paid Technical Conferences on the 1st day of works;
• The alternation (1 STC out of 2) between the high-level panel, and a benchmarking activity focused on sharing innovative experiences of one or more-member companies in a sector (HR, Finance, Customer Management...), which is not necessarily directly related to the STC theme.
• The dedication of 2 days of work to the SC;
• Maintaining the current structure of STC : 3 Specialized Committees and Task Forces will be created as required;
• The establishment of a formal slot for interaction between exhibitors and delegates (1h per day - after lunch break)

General recommendations have been made to ensure the good performance and productivity of SC. These are the following:

• To ensure the appropriate logistical arrangements (registration, transport, etc.)
• To conduct a survey to assess the members expectations in order to identify themes for the meetings
• To establish an annual prize around a theme determined each year, based on criteria defined at the beginning of the year. A guidebook will be produced for the process
• To advocate with the Managing Directors to nominate delegates by SC for a minimum period of 2 years (5 consecutive SCTs)
• To approve the outsourcing of the Exhibition activity to guarantee a minimum of resources for AfWA.
• To standardize the SC reports’ format