The African Water Facility, a unit of the African Development Bank (AfDB), plans to solicit private investors in an effort to set up a $500 million urban sanitation fund, Mtchera Chirwa, the facility’s coordinator, told Western media.
Since its inception in 2004, the African Water Facility has functioned solely as a grant provider, but as donor funding has begun to dwindle, the official said, the facility is adapting its approach, including debt financing in some cases.
The official argued that it could take a decade to raise the funds expected to come from AfDB, donors, and private investors.
According to the coordinator, the fund will focus on improving sewerage systems in African cities, delivering sanitation services in areas not connected to sewers, and financing projects to collect waste for use as fertilizer or in biomass energy plants.
Meanwhile, grant funding for rural water projects will continue, which the official said should rise to $55-65 million a year within two years from $22 million at present.
In early July, to achieve better access to water for communities, Ghana's President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo officially commissioned the third phase of the $12.5 million District Water Supply Project in the Volta Region.
Earlier, South Africa and Lesotho completed the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project to supply water to South Africa's Gauteng region and generate hydroelectricity for Lesotho.