Francophone Africa Regional Workshop of the Swiss Water and Sanitation Consortium

CSO members of the Swiss Water & Sanitation Consortium in West Africa embark on the promotion of water integrity

The Francophone Africa regional workshop of the Swiss Water & Sanitation Consortium was held 7 – 10 May 2018 in Bamako, Mali.

A total of 32 participants from 8 countries in the sub-region – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Togo and Madagascar – attended, representing seven Consortium organisations: CARITAS, Swiss Red Cross, Fastenopfer, HEKS, HELVETAS, SWISSAID, and Terre des hommes.

The general objectives were to share knowledge and learn from each other. This year a particular theme had been chosen that was common to the three regional projects being implemented by the organisations members of  Consortium: water governance.

Each project was invited to present – in film or poster form –  a successful experience on good water governance. Water integrity and several of WIN’s tools such as the Water Integrity Toolkit for Small Suppliers, the Integrity Pact, and the Integrity Charter, were featured prominently in discussions facilitated by Lucie Leclert of CARITAS Kenya, and Françoise Nicole Ndoume of WIN.

Although the projects faced local differences, they each faced the same difficulties.

The group summed up integrity as:

Integrity = Anti-corruption + Transparency + Accountability + Participation

The projects worked individually to identify the governance issues they face. They then presented to the group in the form of small plays – a unique approach that allowed participants to better remember the different cases of risks to integrity presented.

Some of the participants at the Swiss Water Consortium regional workshop in Bamako

To encourage participants to implement relevant actions related to both integrity and Blue Schools – an ongoing project educating school-aged children and young adults on water, sanitation, hygiene and environment so they can transform into ‘happy environmental  ambassadors’ –  all projects were asked to make written commitments via a joint-email within the consortium.  The outcomes included:

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