In order to provide an insight of the African Water Association (AfWA) capacity building program (AfriCap) program and discuss the main challenges and opportunities of the implementing approach with WASH stakeholder include key identified potential partners, a side event to the AfWA International Congress & Exhibition took place at Serena Conference Centre in Kampala, Uganda on 25 February 2019 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM under the theme: ‘’AfriCap Implementing Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities’ and with the chairmanship of Mr. KERE Francis, Directeur of the Ouagadougou Region Ouagadougou (DRO) at Office National de l’Eau et de l’Assainissement (ONEA) Burkina Faso.

In the opening remarks, Ms. Margaret MCMORROW, in charge of the Environment and Agreement Officer's Representative (AOR), in the USAID welcomed all the participants at this event, which is organized under the continuation of AfriCap 1 program. Indeed, after a four-year support to AfWA Executive Office on peer-to-peer partnerships on water quality, satisfactory results were noted i.e. capacity-building of ten (10) water quality auditors, benchmarking visit of facilities at ONEA and Laboratoire National de Santé Publique (LNSP) as well, awareness-raising on utilities’ SWOT for strategic watch, improved internal practices as a result of PIPs elaboration/implementation, and the understanding that some improvement-related changes sometimes require just a few amount of funds. Subsequently, USAID is willing to provide new services to AfWA for its members and amongst members for a further four years (2019-2022) in the areas of water quality just like in AfriCap 1, with an added focus on Non-Revenue Water and inclusive sanitation at the city- level.

Consistent with the workshop schedule, Mr. Gilles DJAGOUN gave a Powerpoint presentation illustrating AfriCap 2 program’s objective, component and proposed implementation strategy. Then through a group work session, the participants had the occasion to brainstorm on the challenges and opportunities around partnering with peers for improved performance in the areas of Water Quality (WQ), Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS).

At the end, participants expressed their satisfaction about the session which allowed them to better understand the AfriCap 2 program. It also helped to understand expectations and potential targets of some of the program’s beneficiary countries in the areas of WQ, NRW and sanitation for a given timeframe, cross- sectoral difficulties were highlighted, thus revealing that several countries experience the same difficulties with financing, equipment, policies etc. in activity implementation.