Funding for Solutions to Improve Access Water, Sanitation
The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and partners today announced new funding for technology-based solutions to improve access to water and sanitation.
About 4.5 billion people worldwide lack access to sanitation while as many as one billion people defecate in the open, and an additional three billion use toilets from which the waste is not safely contained or, once emptied, is not safely treated.
The AAS has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF and ARM Technology to provide the Innovation for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in urban settings grant, which aims to promote healthy, safe, and productive lives. The grant is funded through The AAS Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) programme in partnership with the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). This is the fourth call to be issued under the GC Africa programme in 2018 and the fifth since the launch of the Grand Challenges Africa Innovation Grants in 2016.
Up to $100,000 will be given to each winning project for two years for technologies that improve access to clean drinking water, household sanitation and hygiene, and address urban pollution, and more specifically providing solutions to, among others:
- Integrate hygiene promotion programmes with urban activities (such as marketplaces and schools)
- Fill the data gap on measuring the proportion of waste emptied from pits and septic tanks and taken to treatment
- Establish awareness programming to improve understanding of sanitation-related risks amongst dwellers in low income urban settlements
- Monitor the level of environmental contamination, bacteriological contamination, or service failure across urban contexts and map trends in real-time.
Projects must target individuals, families, communities, urban planners, service providers, or WASH/ food infrastructure, networks, and systems taking into account these users’ needs and social, political, economic, environmental and infrastructural constraints of
The AAS’s vision is to see transformed lives on the African continent through science. Grand Challenges Africa is a programme of The AAS that seeks to promote Africa-led scientific innovations to help countries better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by awarding seed and scale-up grants to the continent’s most impressive solutions.
The African Union Development Agency (formerly known as the NEPAD is the implementing agency of the African Union that advocates for, facilitates and coordinates the development of continent-wide programmes and projects, mobilises resources and engages the global community, regional economic communities and member states in the implementation.. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children.
ARM technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Sida works on behalf of the Swedish parliament and government, to reduce poverty in the world.( Contacts
GCAfrica@aasciences.ac.ke or communication@aasciences.ac.ke )
