he African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) and regional partners have announced plans for a high-level regional conference to specifically focus on the challenge of accelerating sanitation and hygiene programs in the continent.


The International Year of Sanitation was set by the UN General Assembly to help accelerate progress on sanitation by putting the spotlight on this silent crisis.


The AfricaSan + 5 Conference will follow-up five years after the First AfricaSan Conference of 2002 that helped to formulate a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) specifically for sanitation: to reduce, by half, the number of people without access to basic sanitation and hygiene by 2015.


An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide are without proper sanitation and thereby lack protection against preventable diseases. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest sanitation coverage, according to a report on the global of sanitation and hygiene prepared annually by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme.


Only 60% of the African population has access to improved sanitation services, and the continent needs to increase coverage to more than 221 million unserved people to meet the 2015 MDG target date. Despite significant efforts by governments, progress on sanitation targets has been slow and uneven.


AMCOW says the AfricaSan Conference will focus the attention of Africa’s sanitation leaders and technical experts on exploring ways of accelerating achievement of national and the MDG targets for sanitation.


“AfricaSan will bring together African government ministers responsible for sanitation, and other relevant ministries; managerial-level sector professionals from the public and private sectors; and sanitation sector practitioners in civil society; multilateral donor/development agencies; research/training institutions and the media,” says. Itoua, who is also the Congo Minister for Water.

“The overall objective of AfricaSan is to promote sanitation and hygiene improvement programmes in Africa and to assist key African stakeholders identify actions to accelerate achievement of national and the MDG targets for sanitation.”


 “The provision of sanitation is a key development intervention – without it, ill-health dominates a life without dignity. Simply having access to sanitation increases health, well-being and economic productivity. Inadequate sanitation impacts individuals, households, communities and countries. Despite its importance, achieving real gains in sanitation coverage has been slow. Scaling up and increasing the effectiveness of investments in sanitation need to be accelerated to meet the ambitious targets agreed to in Johannesburg in 2002,” he said.

AfricaSan Conference Objectives


The broad objective is to promote sanitation and hygiene improvement programs in Africa and to assist key African stakeholders identify actions to accelerate achievement of national and the MDG targets for sanitation. The specific objectives:
 

 • Assess the status of sanitation and hygiene in Africa and the scale of the challenge to meet the MDG on sanitation by 2015 and the goals of the IYS in Africa; 

 
 • Review actions taken to improve the state of sanitation and hygiene since Africasan 2002, and share experiences, lessons from the participating untries and organisations, in particular success stories and approaches that show promise for achieving sanitation take up and hygiene improvement at scale;
 

 • Discuss and develop an action plan, focussing on strategic areas, to improve monitoring of sanitation and hygiene in the region and accelerate sanitation and hygiene programs regionally and in selected countries across the region;
 

 • Generate political commitment, embodied in a joint declaration, to develop and implement effective regional and national policies, programs and partnerships  based on agreements for collaborative effort at the regional level and specific actions at country levels; 
 
 
 • Raise the profile of sanitation and hygiene as an essential element of sustainable development in the region; and 
 

• Strengthen leadership and advocacy for sustained sanitation and behavior changes.


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