Late in 2009, WSUP was awarded a $4.3m grant from USAID to support the delivery of its African Cities for the Future (ACF) Programme, a three year programme of work covering six projects in the WSUP portfolio.

This programme of work aims to increase equitable access to water supply and sanitation for the African urban poor by: fostering a conducive enabling environment; building the capacity of local service providers and communities; demonstrating sustainable modes of service delivery improvement, documenting lessons learned; and developing scale up plans for city-wide implementation.

Named sub-grantees in the programme include CARE (US), WaterAid and Building Partnerships for Development (BPD). 

This grant is WSUP’s first direct grant from USAID and will deepen WSUP’s relationship with USAID that to date has been limited to small sub-grantee work in West Africa and efforts to collaboratively fund projects in the African urban water and sanitation sector—efforts that USAID has been increasingly targeting in response to the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005.

The WSUP grant is one of several USAID-supported initiatives in Africa that are focused on demonstrating regionally-appropriate, sustainable solutions to urban water and sanitation service challenges. Two other such programs are the regional SUWASA program focused on promoting utility sector reform and the WASH-UP program in Ghana. WSUP plans to actively engage with these and other USAID-funded national-level water and sanitation programs in the coming years.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent U.S. government agency that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of United States foreign policy goals.