African Water Facility
Strategy
The AWF, legally established by the Board of Governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) on 25 May 2004 by approving the Instrument for the Establishment of the African Water Facility Special Fund, is an initiative led by the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW). The AfDB is hosting the Facility on the request of AMCOW. The objective is to The African Water Facility (AWF) will maintain its mandate to improve the enabling environment and strengthen water resources management so as to attract and make effective use of increased and appropriate investments needed to achieve the national and regional water sector targets.
Focus
Two broad areas of support have been defined in that regard: i) Improving the enabling environment to attract more investments; and ii) Direct capital investment for the purpose of triggering larger investment for sustainable development, focusing on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at the national level and Transboundary Water Resources Management (TWRM) at the regional level (AMCOW/NEPAD priorities). The areas of supports comprise the following:
IWRM and TWRM: Information and knowledge; Monitoring and Evaluation systems; Policy development and reforms; Planning, strategy and programme development and implementation; Environmental management activities; Social analysis; promotion of public–private partnership; Advocacy and legislative processes on water sharing; Inter-basin and intra-basin cooperation and coordination among riparian states.
Water sector investments: Support for the preparation of projects and programmes for immediate funding; pilot projects using best practices; new technologies in water and sanitation; direct investments to small scale projects that have major impact on local communities and to scale up investments in the water sector.
Instruments
The African Water Facility provides grants to finance projects from government, as well as from Local Government directly, and even NGOs in some cases. Working on a fast track basis and the AfDB’s Board has delegated its approval prerogative as follow: The AWF Director could approve up to EURO 500,000 Euro, the AfDB President between 500,000 to 2,000,000 million, while the Board for more than 2 million on a no-objection basis. The AWF has also the mandate to attract more resource in water projects, to be implemented in short and limited time with clear results, and this includes the financing of facilitation activities and physical investment for local communities.
Major Achievements
The AWF’s first grant ( €165 000) supports the formal establishment of the Volta Basin Authority (VBA) and Six West African riparian countries will benefit from joint water resources management and development.