The African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW) will continue to work with funding partners and continental financing institutions as well as lead advocacy in closing the financing gap for investments in water and sanitation infrastructure.

Speaking in Abuja, Nigeria during the Innovate 4 Water - a market-place forum for sustainable development - Tobias Omufwoko AMCOW's Senior Policy Advisor on behalf of the Executive Secretary of AMCOW, Dr. Canisius Kanangire noted that AMCOW will continue to work with funding partners and continental financing institutions as well as lead advocacy in closing the financing gap for investments in water and sanitation infrastructure.

Mr. Omufwoko said that AMCOW will also develop and deliver a training course, with a guideline refence manual, to build capacity among Member States professionals on private sector participation options, and develop and maintain a free access, on-line financial model for Member States and provide training to professionals from the continent to be able to apply the model in determining the level of capital and operating costs to implement various capital investment strategies.

He said that AMCOW will also support member countries with policy guidelines in order to effectively deliver on SDG 6 and Ngor commitments, and develop and deliver a training course, with a guideline refence manual, to build capacity among Member States professionals on private sector participation options, as well as support in effective monitoring and reporting framework.

The forum presented a unique opportunity for small sized companies to present their activities and develop collaboration with a curated set of stakeholders in the water and sanitation ecosystem locally. The forum also highlighted the role of the private sector in providing innovative solutions to the water and sanitation sector in Nigeria.

“Innovate 4 Water” brought together diverse water stakeholders - entrepreneurs, investors, large and small companies, ICT companies, agribusiness sector, non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, incubators - that are contributing toward the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, that speaks to clean water and sanitation for all people.

The format of the event was in a form of a marketplace forum accommodating 200-250 people. The setupof the forum was to foster meaningful interactions between participants. During the forum there were mainly short pitches and networking discussions.

The forum featured selected organisations working in the WASH sector, impact investing, social entrepreneurship and UN agencies, including the World Bank, USAID , WaterAid among others. A large segment of the forum was dedicated to organizations presenting their water technology needs to potential providers, partners and investors.

The forum was organised by Waterpreneurs, a global “for-impact organization” supporting the scaling-up of impact investments financing the growth of water and sanitation (WASH) enterprises operating in developing countries, and respecting human rights.

Waterpreneurs fosters interactions between global players from the private sector, the public sector and from civil society to direct finance toward impact projects in the communities, with the main objective to foster local ecosystem consolidation. Waterpreneurs has created the Marketplace forum “Innovate 4 Water”.

Final Communique:

The Libreville Multi-stakeholders’ Declaration on Achieving Water Security and Safely Managed Sanitation for Africa

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