Welcome to the Africa Water and Sanitation Week 2021

The 8th Africa Water Week (AWW8) and the 6th Africa Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene (AfricaSan6) are being held together as one virtual conference this year – the Africa Water and Sanitation Week 2021 (AWSW). The conference, convened by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) and the African Union Commission (AUC), is organized together with other development partners. The virtual conference will be held on November 22–26, 2021.

AWW and AfricaSan are AMCOW’s flagship water and sanitation events, and represent a political commitment at the highest level. They are institutionalized platforms to discuss and collectively seek solutions to Africa’s water and sanitation challenges.

The conference program encompasses two major tracks of water and sanitation, which are broken down further into the following subthemes:

Water:

Transboundary water management for cooperation and shared development
Lead conveners: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)/International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC)/Cooperation in International Waters in Africa (CIWA)

Enhancing water security through sustainable management of groundwater resources
Lead convener: Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR)

Building Africa’s resilience to climate change and related disasters
Lead conveners: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)/British Geological Survey (BGS)

Addressing water and sanitation sector enablers and drivers: Policy, capacity development, knowledge management, financing, among others
Lead convener: Global Water Partnership (GWP)

Sanitation:

Inclusive policy and strategy for accelerating sanitation and hygiene improvement in Africa
Lead conveners: Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) and Eastern and Southern Africa Water and Sanitation (ESAWAS)

Bridging the human resource gap for sanitation and hygiene in Africa
Lead convener: Water Research Commission (WRC), South Africa

Fecal sludge management, green economy and climate change
Lead convener: African Water Association (AfWA)

Improving hygiene in Africa: Building on the momentum of Covid era hand hygiene
Lead convener: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

And a crosscutting subtheme on:

Securing innovative financing for water, sanitation and hygiene in financially challenging times
Lead convener: African Development Bank (AfDB)

The Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP) will be present throughout the ‘water’ track, and will provide support to AMCOW’s Pan-African Groundwater Program (APAGroP).

Two sessions conducted by GRIPP partners:

You will be able to access more information when you register and browse the conference program. Several GRIPP partners are involved in the conference in addition to those mentioned above:

Africa Groundwater Network (AGW-Net)
British Geological Survey (BGS)
Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Germany
International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH)
International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC)
International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
Skat Consulting Ltd. (Skat)
Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), Sweden
The World Bank (WB)
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (UNESCO-IHP)