Under the leadership of Mrs. Robyn Bertholon, Regional Contracting and Agreement Officer, some executives from USAID West Africa Office paid a visit to AfWA Headquarters from April 23 to 24, 2019. This visit was part of the collaboration between both institutions involved since 2015 in the implementation of AfWA Capacity Building Programme (AfriCap).

The overall objective of this Programme is to strengthen AfWA's capacity to coordinate, formulate, adapt and harmonize WASH policies in order to improve sector performance in Africa in general and in West Africa in particular. After about four years of implementation, an evaluation was conducted and the satisfaction expressed has led USAID to engage discussions with AfWA for the extension of this programme for a further four years (2019-2023) amounting to USD 04 million.

While the activities of the first programme were mainly focused on West Africa, those of the new programme over the next four years will be open to other regions of Africa. This USAID support, through AfriCap programme, will enable AfWA to better fulfill its mandate as the Pan-African Support Association for Water and Sanitation Sector Organizations to improve their performance in providing water and sanitation services to populations.

Thus, at the end of these two days of meetings, both parties expressed their satisfaction regarding the discussions and in particular on both the technical proposal and the budget. Recommendations made will allow AfWA to submit its full proposal by May 10, 2019.

It should be noted that one of the key outcomes of the implementation of the first phase of AfriCap programme was the development of AfWA Strategic Business Plan 2018-2022 (SBP 2018-2022). Thus, the extension of this programme will help facilitate the implementation of this business plan, especially the components on membership service improvement (knowledge sharing, development of peer-to-peer partnerships on several themes) as well as improving governance and management of the Organization.