WASHCost in Ghana

WASHCost project Ghana, has been in progress since May 2008. It was officially launched on September 2008.

In Ghana, it is being implemented by the Department of Civil Engineering (DCE) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). The project builds partnerships includes key sector actors such as the Ministry of Water Resources Works and Housing’s (MWRWH) Water Directorate (WD), Ministry of Local Government Rural Development and Environment’s (MLGRDE) Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD), Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), civil society and private sector actors. The project facilitates sector learning and sharing on a platform called the Learning Alliance (LA). Membership of the WASHCost Ghana Learning Alliance is open to all who are interested to take part in the learning and sharing of useful information in the WASH sector, building of synergies to advance the course of the sector.

As an action research project, it seeks to gather as much as it can on unit cost information in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector (WASH) of Ghana for better governance and planning through use of information captured. There is a focus on identifying information and developing approaches that will allow the poor to access acceptable levels of service.

‘...Understanding the cost of providing sustainable WASH services is important for us...’ – Mr. Minta Aboagye (Director of Water, Water Directorate, MWRWH)

What WASHCost Ghana is doing: As mentioned earlier, WASHCost as an action research project in Ghana researches the life-cycle costs of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in rural and peri-urban areas. The rationale is that WASH governance will improve at all levels be it national, regional, district, community, towns and villages as decision makers and stakeholders analyse the costs of sustainable, equitable and efficient services and put their knowledge to use. The project has three (3) phases, thus, the inception, research and embedding. The inception phase which ended in December 2008, was to carry out a Rapid Assessment of the WASH sector in Ghana, which constituted the Institutional Mapping of the sector, Unit Cost scan and formation of alliances and partners with key stakeholders. The research phase has recently begun and this will walk alongside the embedding phase.

At the moment there are over fifty Learning Alliance members at the National, Regional, District and Local level. There is a Task Force group who are also members of the Learning Alliance who are more closely involved in WASHCost activities. Through this multi-stakeholder approach, WASHCost in Ghana is innovating with joint research, data collection, and planning around the cost of quality WASH services.
There is an active and ongoing field visits to test research methodologies at Oyibi in the Greater Accra Region from April 2009. This active research will be replicated in some other regions of Ghana. The cost of maintaining an appreciable level of service is a critical factor in the planning of sustainable services and technologies. Although this is universally acknowledged, it has never been systematically addressed and that is what WASHCost Ghana seeks to do.

‘...it will be great for us all to know how much it costs to change human behaviour.....’ - Mrs. Theodora Adomako-Adjei (Extension Services Coordinator, CWSA)

WASHCost Ghana Team members: The project at the moment has the team as follows:
Dr. Kwabena Nyarko, Country Director; Alex Obuobisa-Darko, Country coordinator; Michele Adjei-Fah (Ms), Documentation and Communication Officer; Abdulai Suglo, Finance Officer; Kwaku Adjei, IT/Data Manger. There are two National Service Personnel, namely, Emmanuel Oppong-Antwi and Henrietta Osei-Tutu. Dr. Patrick Moriarty is the IRC WASH Governance Specialist for West Africa.