Water, sanitation, and hygiene : the African WASH ministers’ guide to finance

This guide provides an overview for African WASH ministers and their teams of essential finance-related concepts required to engage optimally with finance ministries, parliamentarians, financial institutions, and other high-level decision makers. It provides numerous links to additional resources and references.  The main goal of this guide is to support strategies and approaches for African WASH ministers to raise additional finance for the sector, to make effective use of the limited available financial resources, and to improve the overall financial sustainability of WASH financing. It provides available evidence and data from diverse African countries that can be used to influence the mobilisation of much needed domestic financial resources.

Key takeaways include:

• Understanding the financial issues that are relevant for finance ministers and other high-level decision makers is a first step in being able to advocate for higher levels of funding and financing
• Current funding is less than 10% of what is needed to achieve SDG 6, most countries are progressing too slowly, and in some countries coverage has decreased and at the current rate only 37% coverage for safely managed drinking water will be reached
• Political decisions and policies made by WASH ministers can have a considerable positive impact on the water and sanitation sector

This guide is complementary to AMCOW's "The African Ministers' WASH Finance Brief", which provides more evidence to support the mobilisation of investment for the WASH sector.