GHANA: AWF approves funding for water sustainability project (06/07/10)
The African Water Facility (AWF) has approved an €498,000 ($626,600) grant to Ghana’s Water Resources Commission to fund a project that is intended to increase sustainability of the country’s water and wastewater cycles.
The grant will finance a project that will introduce a market and end-user oriented planning approach that simultaneously closes the water and nutrient loops, called ‘design for reuse’. The aim is to leverage the economic value of wastewater and sludge nutrients to help finance, operate and maintain treatment facilities.
According to a 2008 study undertaken by the International Water Management Institute (IMWI), the 55 existing wastewater treatment plants and seven municipal sludge treatment plans in the country have a total design capacity to serve about 25% of the urban population, but less than 10% are operating to their design parameters. As a consequence, diarrhoeal diseases are the second greatest public health problem after malaria for most communities in Ghana.
To address this, Ghana’s Water Resources Commission submitted a grant proposal to the African Water Facility to support a project that would harvest the value of effluent and nutrients to sustain the operation of sanitation facilities.
The goal of the project is to improve the long-term operation and integrity of wastewater and sludge treatment plants in urban Ghana.
The ‘design for reuse approach’ is an effort to establish the sanitation sector as an active contributor to local economies. The project will reduce the incidence of waterborne diseases, improve access to sanitation services, and improve the operational and financial sustainability of wastewater treatment plants and sludge treatment plants.
The project will be implemented on a pilot scale with four value chains: reuse in irrigation; aquaculture; large-scale land application of sludge and biogas recovery.
The project also includes capacity building, which will be achieved through developing and publishing planning protocols and hosting interactive training workshops.
The total estimated cost of the project is €559,800 ($704,400) which will be financed by an AWF grant of €498,000 ($626,600, 88% of the cost), and by contributions of the projects partners estimated at €61,000 ($76,800).
