The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area Sanitation and WaterProject (GAMA SWP) has won the “Most Engaging Presentation Award” at the All Systems Go Africa Symposium held at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra from 19 to 21 October 2022. The Award is one of the only two presented by the organizers of the symposium.
The Symposium, the first in Africa and 2nd globally, is a sequel to the All Systems Connect Conference which convened in the Netherlands in 2019. It was organized by IRC with support from UNICEF and the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources and was attended by over 200 participants from 22 countries across the world.
Mrs. Charlotte Akwaah-Adjei Marfo, Program Manager of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources and leader of the Capacity Building Team of the project, who made the presentation on behalf of the Project at the symposium, received the award on behalf of the project. The Capacity Building Team is driving institutional strengthening and integration of systems in project implementation within the 30beneficiary Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies in Kumasi and Accra.
The presentation entitled, Service Delivery at Scale: Adoption of Systems Strengthening in Promoting Household Toilets in low-income Urban Communities in Ghana, which won the award, described the institutional and governance systems and processes adopted by the GAMA Sanitation and Water Projectto improve access to sanitation and water service delivery forresidents in low-income urban communities in Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi.
The GAMA Project, since its inception in 2015, has coordinated the provision of household toilets to more than342,000 individuals, some 232,000 school pupils benefitting from school sanitation facilities and another 368,000 low-income residents getting access to water connections from the Ghana Water Company limited in Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi since 2015. The presentation further demonstratedhow those systems and processes could be scaled up to other geographical areas for increased WASH service delivery to other low-income urban communities across the Country.
The organizers of the Symposium described the presentation as the future of systems development in delivery of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services to low-income urban communities in Africa.
As part of the award, Mrs. Charlotte Akwaah Adjei will be fully funded to participate in the 2023 All Systems Connect Conference in the Netherlands.
The GAMA Sanitation and Water Project initially started in Greater Accra in 2015 but was extended to Greater Kumasi in 2021 due to its excellent achievements in Accra buoyed by thesystems and processes adopted that has led to an increase in access to water and sanitation services to over one million low-income dwellers.