Lessons from inception phase WASHCost programme

Understanding of life cycle unit costs for more sustainable water sanitation and hygiene facilities and services is increasing in Ghana following the launch of the WASHCost programme in Ghana. This was one of the achievements shared by the Ghana team at the end of nine months of inception work of the WASH Cost programme in Andra Pradesh (India), Burkina Faso and Mozambique.

The county teams joined the global management ad advisory teams at a five-day planning meeting in the Netherlands early October 2008. They looked back at their achievements and milestones around the Learning Alliances, the Research Protocol, Communication Strategy, Impact Assessment and Project Management and replanned for (country and global) action and resources in 2009, the first year of implementation. Parallel to the End of Inception Phase Meeting, a financial workshop was organized. The aim was to jointly develop a WASHCost Financial Manual that includes a reporting and audit package. IRC’s financial officers joined the session on planning, complementing the various (country) teams.

Ghana launch linked with training

Mr. Minta Aboagye, the Director of Water at the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing did the official Ghana launch on 9 September 2008 at the Erata Hotel in Accra. The consultant who did the rapid assessment made a presentation of the institutional assessment and gave an overview of the unit cost scan in the sector. WASHCost global team members Catarina Fonseca and Dr. Kristin Komives gave inputs to various sessions, joined by 52 participants. With IRC support the first in a series of trainings in WASH Governance using IRC’s Local Governance for WASH package was carried out for stakeholders in the sector on 10 September 2008 on three of the modules:

• Financing and cost recovery
• Strategic planning
• Monitoring and evaluation

Twenty five participants have selected three additional modules and have agreed to join two-day training sessions that WASHCost/IRC will organize every three moths in 2009. The incentive for them to join is the completion certificate they qualify for at the end.

Ghana team joins Burkina Faso launch and training

The Ghana team made the first regional experience exchange visit linked to the official WASHCost launch in Burkina Faso on 22 September 2008. The Ghana team contributed to the rapid assessment sharing since the interim results were discussed during the launch workshop. The team also attended the one-day training on governance and WASHCost. The Burkina participants want to benefit from all the 10 modules in Frence of IRC's Goverenance of WASH services package.

WASHCost at NETSSAF conference

About eight WASHCost global team members (from Ghana, Holland and Burkina Faso) attended the international Network for the development of Sustainable Approaches for large scale implementation of Sanitation in Africa (NETSSAF) conference in Ouagadougou Burkina Faso from 24 to 27 September 2008 and took part in various workshops. WASHCost organized a side event on the 24th. The WASHCost session at NETSSAF presented the results of the assessments from Ghana and Burkina Faso, and used this information to open a discussion on “the challenges of identifying and using high quality cost information for improved sanitation services to the poor”. The session provided participants with an opportunity to learn more about WASHCost and to shape its research agenda for the next four years. A flyer was developed for this side event to make strong advertisement for the event and attract many conference participants.