Ghana benefits from another IRC Project, Tripple-S

Ghana is one of the two countries that stand to benefit from a six-year Sustainable Services at Scale (or Triple-S) project. The project is headed by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with the involvement of the UK based firm Aguaconsult. The initiative is to improve sustainability of rural water supply for some of the world’s poorest people, by reshaping the way these services are provided. Rural water supply continues to be a significant problem. Of the one billion people globally who live without reliable access to safe water, nine out of ten live in rural areas. While the UN Millennium Development Goals aim to halve that number by 2015, there is a growing concern that the drive to increase the number of new taps and pumps neglects the need to maintain water systems and to raise finances for replacement costs. In the last 20 years between 600-800,000 hand pumps have been installed in sub-Saharan Africa, of which some 30% are known to fail prematurely, representing a total investment of between $1.2 and $1.5 billion. Since different donors and government agencies promote different systems, there is no comprehensive approach to water supply coverage or equipment and no economies of scale to follow up to ensure that boreholes, pumps and wells survive for their designed life spans. The Sustainable Services at Scale (Triple-S) project seeks to contribute to ending the cycle of failure that causes wells, pumps and piped systems in rural areas to require replacement every few years because they have not been maintained. Triple-S aims to end this cycle of despair by developing scalable business models that will ensure ongoing maintenance and repair of water systems. With a US $22 million (€16.1 million) grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project will apply these models in rural districts and small towns in Ghana and Uganda. For these models to be effective Triple-S will work with government, planners, donors and water service providers and promote joint development, joint funding and joint implementation of the models. Triple-S, like the WASHCost, SWITCH and the TPP projects, will establish a Learning Alliance (LA) made up of representatives of water agencies, academic institutions, governmental agencies at national and district level, civil society, consumers and the private sector. The LA will oversee research into existing experiences with rural water supply to learn what works and identify the existing constraints. Pilot district activities will be initiated to develop and test new models for rural water supply. Triple-S will promote the replication of successful model in other districts in Ghana and Uganda and in other countries where there is demand. It will also seek to strengthen the capacity of service providers and especially of decentralised local government to regulate and monitor services. The project will link up with other IRC initiatives in the selected countries to make the most effective use of resources and to increase outcomes and impact. In Ghana, it will cooperate with the WASHCost project, which seeks to disaggregate the full life cycle costs of water and sanitation schemes including all the support and maintenance costs. WASHCost is also run by IRC in collaboration with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology with financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Full press release is available on: http://www.irc.nl/page/48048.