African Water Facility Launches the Fostering Innovative Sanitation and Hygiene in Monrovia Project

Published on April 30, 2013 10:43 by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Social

The Fostering Innovative Sanitation and Hygiene (FISH) in Monrovia Project funded by the African Water Facility (AWF) was launched yesterday in the presence of over 40 people including representatives of beneficiaries and development partners.

The Facility offers a €1.2-million grant to the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) to support a project aimed at increasing access to sustainable and affordable sanitation and hygiene services to over 800,000 urban slum-dwellers in Monrovia, Liberia.

This will be the first initiative by the Government to provide fecal sludge management services to unsewered poor areas of Liberia since the end of the civil war in 2003. The long-standing conflict put a halt to infrastructure maintenance and development, particularly in the area of water and sanitation, which led to a drop in access rates - a situation that continues to deteriorate in the unsewered informal settlements of Monrovia city, where 70 per cent of the city's population lives.

Through a community-driven approach, the project will seek to enhance capacity for sustainable city-wide fecal sludge management. This will complement efforts by the Government of Liberia and development partners to improve service access rates and reduce the vulnerability of the urban poor to diseases caused by water contamination resulting from open defecation and septic tank overflows. It is also expected to build donor confidence in Liberia.

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