AMCOW seeks hamonised policies on sanitation in Africa
Sanitation
By Tosin Kolade
Abuja, March 12, 2020 (NAN) Dr Canisius Kanangire, the Executive Secretary, African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), has called for the harmonisation of sanitation policies to accelerate sanitation progress in the region.
Kanagire told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja that using the Africa Sanitation Policy Guidelines (ASPG) would be a strategic tool to address the challenges within the 55 countries and the issues in the environment.
According to him, the ongoing country consultations are an opportunity to influence the content of the ASPG to provide guidance to countries on what is an ideal sanitation policy.
NAN reports that the ASPG is an initiative to strengthen the enabling environment for sanitation in Africa; trigger and guide for reforms needed to accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) six.
He said he had been mandated by the African Union to provide leadership, policy direction and advocacy on the management and development of water resources; this includes the provision of sanitation services.
Kanagire said that the mandate was given mainly for the purpose of good services by the horizon of 2025, which was the African Water Vision deadline.
“When we look at sanitation, one of the issues we noticed is that most African countries are still working on policies guided by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) objectives and target, yet the MDGs was evaluated in 2015.
“Now, we have moved to the SDGs which were targeted at having the number of people who are not accessing different basic services, the SDGs are even more ambitious because it targets everyone, we should leave no one behind.
“So, the policy that we are promoting today should be the one with the right target, with the right objectives and because of that, they should develop the needed factors that will ensure that they succeed.”
Kanagire said that those factors should be targeted at the right institutions, the right mechanism, finance, capacity and others, stressing that there was need to work toward that objective.
In a related development, Mr Emmanuel Awe, the Director, Water Quality Control and Sanitation, Federal Ministry of Water Resources commended the Nigerian government’s efforts in the area of sanitation.
Awe said a number of sanitation policies existed presently which the government had decided to harmonise, adding that very soon all the policies existing in the different ministries would be harmonised into a single document.
He said that would allow all development partners and other agencies to have access and they would know exactly where to intervene.
“We believe this will help us in the harmonisation of policies so that the needed action can be inputted into the newly harmonised policy,” Awe said. (NAN)
TAK/AWA/GY
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Edited by Olawunmi Ashafa/Grace Yussuf