The second phase of work on Systems Strengthening for Sustainable Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Services at Scale began in 2020 and is being implemented over the next five years until 2025.
Project aims
We aim to significantly improve urban WASH systems in the Amhara, Oromia and Tigray regions, increasing access to reliable, sustainable and affordable WASH services to reach 4.75 million people who live in 44 cluster lead urban towns.
We plan to achieve the following short-term outcomes:
- Sustainable and effective systems for supporting and overseeing utilities being installed across the three regions, and successful aspects being replicated in other regions.
- Improvements in WASH service standards, performance, equity and access across all project towns of the three regions (including non-target towns).
- As a long-term outcome, the project will increase performance of utilities, increasing access and improving service levels for water and sanitation across 23 towns within three regions. Our region-wide cluster approach can be upscaled both nationally and globally to reach millions more people.
Project costs
The total cost of the project will be GBP 2.5 million (ETB 100.8 million), with phase two taking half of the budget, and phase three requiring GBP 1.2 million (ETB 50.4 million). We currently have a funding gap which we’re working to bring in additional money for.
Phase one of the programme
Between 2013 and 2019, with funding from Yorkshire Water, we implemented phase one of the Urban WASH Capacity Development Project. The whole idea of phase two is to build on the achievements of the first phase, and to further develop the region-wide cluster approach.
The region-wide cluster approach brings together small and rural towns to help them build their WASH capability in many ways. Towns like Debre Tabor significantly changed their services and generated adequate money to run public services including providing water for free to the very poor in the community.