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West Africa1. Why did you choose to work in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone? 2. What are your plans in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone? 3. What is the current water and sanitation situation in Niger, Liberia and Sierra Leone? 4. What are the key challenges that WaterAid faces in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone? 5. What impact do you think WaterAid can have in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone? 1. Why did you choose to work in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone?Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone are some of the poorest countries in the world, occupying the bottom end of the Human Development Index. Accordingly, each of these countries has extremely low water and sanitation coverage rates. In Sierra Leone and Liberia - post-conflict countries - we will generate experience of building capacity to deliver sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene services in countries that are moving from humanitarian relief to a development focus. In Niger, an ecologically fragile environment, we will deepen our expertise around solutions to water resource management in an extremely water stressed area, providing valuable evidence for use in our work around the global climate change debate. Sierra Leone and Liberia are Anglophone, while Niger is Francophone. This allows us to draw from our existing expertise in Nigeria and Ghana, and Mali and Burkina Faso respectively, in supporting work in the new countries. 2. What are your plans in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone?We have one two year pilot programme in Niger, and another two year pilot programme that jointly covers Sierra Leone and Liberia. Niger The work on the ground has been led by a Programme Manager from WaterAid in Burkina Faso, who has been successful in setting up the offices, identifying partners and areas for intervention and establishing partnerships with key institutions. These include AGRHYMET, the regional meteorological office with expertise in climate change issues, and UNICEF. The work in each new country is being heavily supported by our West Africa Regional Learning Centres for sanitation and decentralised water, sanitation and hygiene services, based in Nigeria and Mali, respectively. Accordingly, training on Community-Led Total Sanitation is planned for the second half of 2009/10, as is training around the Local Millennium Development Goals Initiative approach. As in all of our country programmes in West Africa, Community-Led Total Sanitation will be the main approach adopted for sanitation, and there will be a strong focus on working closely with local government using the Local Millennium Development Goals Initiative approach. To this end, the six local government areas in which we will be working in Niger have already been supported to develop local development plans, which include plans for water, sanitation and hygiene services. A Country Manager has also been recruited and is due to commence work in January 2010. Sierra Leone and Liberia There will be a small staff team in Liberia of about four people and one person in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on secondment from government. Progress has been slower than in Niger as we started 2009/10 with only a small quantity of unrestricted funding. However, we have since been successful in securing contracted funding from the Isle of Man for Sierra Leone, and have submitted funding applications for Liberia. This has enabled us to start making more concrete strides forward, and since the appointment of the team leader we have been able to secure office space within a government ministry in Monrovia, as well as strengthen our contacts with key sector actors. The focus of the work will be around Community-Led Total Sanitation and the Local Millennium Development Goals Initiative approach. We have already started supporting the local development plan process in the areas in which we will be working. We will work in two districts in Sierra Leone (Kenema and Pujehun) and three counties in Liberia (Grand Kru, Maryland and River Gee). These are felt to be the most marginalised, under-served in water and sanitation and least likely to be served through the efforts of government and other agencies. We will also engage in policy work in Liberia and have so far commented on Liberia's first post-war water, sanitation and hygiene policy and are now a member of the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) consortium in the country. In addition, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has become a water, sanitation and hygiene ambassador for WaterAid. WaterAid will continue to leverage this strong political will in Liberia, as well as the strong will that exists among civil society in Sierra Leone. WaterAid previously worked in Sierra Leone before having to withdraw as a result of the outbreak of war; we look forward to continuing our work in the country. 3. What is the current water and sanitation situation in Niger, Liberia and Sierra Leone?
4. What are the key challenges that WaterAid faces in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone?As of October 2009, Niger is suffering political and civil unrest due to the incumbent President changing the constitution. Work is currently slowed down while elections take place. It is unclear how this may affect work going forward, although so far protests and other unrest have not affected operations too adversely. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, the threat of resurgence in conflict is always a potential issue, and as such we must be mindful of the factors that caused the conflict in the first place and ensure that we do not do anything through our work that might exacerbate them. The high costs of living and operating in what are both grossly inflated economies are also quite prohibitive. In addition, we have chosen to operate in some of the most marginalised and difficult to reach areas, with very poor road links. Once again this will inflate our costs and also has the potential to slow down our work. 5. What impact do you think WaterAid can have in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone?WaterAid can have an impact in each of the countries by ensuring low-cost, appropriate and sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene technologies and approaches are promoted to ensure the most vulnerable groups gain access to these services. By using the Local Millennium Development Goals Initiative approach to engage with local governments we hope to build each country's capacity (as well as that of other key sector stakeholders), resulting in sustainable change in the lives of poor people.
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