Three countries benefit from USAID project
Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger are currently benefiting from a $20million (US) project aimed at increasing access to potable water, sanitation and improved hygiene in rural areas.
Advertisement
The four-year project started in 2011 and is scheduled to end in 2015. It focuses on water, sanitation and hygiene, food security and climate change.
The project
The project, West Africa Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme (WA-WASH), is being funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by a consortium of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the three beneficiary countries.
In Ghana, the project is being implemented in 20 communities in the Upper West Region by Care International, an NGO which has helped to improve sanitation and hygiene, hand washing in schools and dry season farming, especially for women engaged in vegetable farming, in the beneficiary communities.
Households have also been supported to construct their own sanitary facilities, which has helped to halt open defecation in the communities.
The project in Burkina Faso has also helped to increase access to potable water, hygiene and built the capacities of the communities with regard to climate change adaptation and resilience.
Visit to a project site
The United States (US) Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies (USUN) in Rome, Italy, Ambassador David Lane, visited Oueglaga, one of the beneficiary communities in the Kadiego Province of the Tannghin Dassouri Region in the central part of Burkina Faso.
Journalists from Ghana, Niger, Mali, Cote d' Ivoire and Burkina Faso accompanied Ambassador Lane to learn at first hand, its impact on the community.
Other Trending Stories
Nikiema Tenin, a female vegetable farmer, said the project had improved the community's access to potable water and improved agriculture.
She noted that the rope pump installed on their existing wells, provision of new water points such as boreholes and garden wells had impacted tremendously on their health and that of their families since they did not exert much energy when drawing water from the wells. She added that the project had facilitated dry season farming in the community since they could now irrigate their farms.
Zoungrana Yembi and Ilboudor Habibou, both female farmers, said the project had increased their yields and they now produce more vegetables for consumption and sale.
Ambassador Lane expressed his joy at the successes chalked up under the project and said it formed part of President Obama's initiative to achieve food security in Africa, promote sustainable agriculture and educate the communities on climate change.
Other component of the project
Mr Patrice Beanjeault, Director of Winrock International, one of the NGOs implementing the project in Oueglaga, who briefed Ambassador Lane and his entourage, said the improved water systems in the community were not only for human consumption, but for animals and farming and added that the integrated approach to the project had helped to improve the health and incomes of farmers, as well as ensured food security.