With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the African Water Association (AfWA) has developed from 2012 to 2015, a major program entitled, « Further Advance Blue Revolution Initiative (FABRI) » for the capacity building of water utilities to reduce Non-Revenue Water (NRW) in Sub-Saharan Africa. This program enabled 19 African water utilities to improve their performance through the identification of short- and medium-term actions to substantially reduce NRW in these utilities and thus postpone some investments.

To ensure a smooth development of this program, a Task Force composed of 14 African technical experts from 13 water utilities in 12 countries was created and its members were trained in auditing water utilities in NRW management, between 2012 and 2018.

However, changes in the water utilities (retirements, promotions, changes in positions of responsibility, etc.) have created a scattering of network members, leading AfWA to form a new group of auditors to support the utilities, within the framework of its AfriCap program (AfWA Capacity Building Program - NRW Component).

Thus, in order to relaunch the audit operations on NRW in a dozen companies requesting services from the AfWA, the Association is organizing in the coming days, a refresher course on NWR for auditors members of the Task Force.

The objective of the training, according to Mr. Gilles DJAGOUN, Senior Coordinator of the Water Program in charge of AfriCap of AfWA, is to consolidate the knowledge of the auditors in order to conduct an audit on NRW. Specifically, it is to strengthen their capacity on the use of the EASYCALC software and to design a standard audit framework on NRW.

Considering the current health context marked by COVID19, the training of the auditors will be done online. The auditors involved come from Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea-Conakry, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Malawi.

About the AfriCap program

The African Water Association Capacity Building Program (AfriCap) is funded by USAID for the period 2015-2022. This program aims to support AfWA in its mandate to build the capacity of African stakeholders in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector through (i) the dissemination of knowledge and good practices, (ii) peer-to-peer learning partnerships on the three themes: Non-Revenue Water (NWR), Water Quality (WQ) and CityWide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) and (iii) institutional capacity building of AfWA.