Uganda through National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) will soon host the African Water Academy. Earlier this year, Uganda received the approval to host the Academy that will offer training to staff in the water and sanitation sector in all utilities in Africa.
Silver Mugisha, Managing Director at National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) explained that the African Water Academy is an institution of the African Water Association of all the utilities of Africa that has been in existence for over 40 years and the idea of establishing a continental training facility was first conceived 10 years ago, with Uganda fronted as best nation to host the facility.
Mugisha also said that the NWSC and Uganda at large was are very privileged to host the academy because it is international in nature covering the whole of Africa.
In anticipation, Uganda has enacted more service delivery innovations into the NWSC Corporate Plan 2021-2024, anchored on the country’s strategic plans. Key among them is the NWSC new strategic plans which focus on resilient utility, smart meter utility, inhouse meter testing and maintenance labs, innovation and incubation center, African Water and Sanitation Academy among others.
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NWSC has designed its game changing strategic interventions to include;
- Mobilising funding for downstream sewerage collection infrastructure for Greater Kampala and design and implementation of low-cost appropriate sewage treatment technologies in other towns,
- Financial support for 6-Cities Water Supply improvement project, using modular designs, for at least 7,000m3/day additional capacity per city, to serve for 7-10yrs (estimated budget: US $85million),
- Support to high climate change resilience infrastructure for NWSC towns, through mixed technology options and decentralised WSS systems,
- Mobilising more support from security agents to mitigate vandalism and theft of NWSC infrastructure assets, leading into financial and revenue losses Strengthening provisions of financing agreements relating to loan financing so that the client has more soverign rights to decide on critical stages of procurements of projects; and,
- Mobilising financing to cater for funding gaps on settling arrears on completed projects to mitigate costly interest payments.
“The role of the Academy would be to train future leaders for water and sanitation sector in Africa. It is just going to work as a coordination unit, managed largely from the secretariat of African Water Association in Côte d’Ivoire and the project office in the same place,” Mugisha said.
As part of the implementation of its Business Plan 2018-2022, the African Water Association (AfWA), will be structuring the coordination of all its training activities in the framework of the operationalization of the African Water and Sanitation Academy (AWASA). This will involve setting up a coordination hub headquartered at the International Resource Center (IREC) of the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) in Kampala- Uganda, from which training shall be deployed in different Operational training centers managed by its members in the regions.