Ethiopia: Forum Reflects on WSS financing

The third meeting of the Forum for Learning on Water and Sanitation (FLoWS), held on 28 November 2008 in Adama/Nazareth, reflected on current directions of water supply and sanitation (WSS) financing in Ethiopia.

The meeting included presentations and debates on the country’s water policy and the system of engaging actors in policy processes, Joint Budget Aid Review (JBAR) reports, experiences with the Community Development Fund (CDF) in financing community water supply programs in Amhara and a number of research outputs on WSS financing.

While decentralisation, participation, cost recovery and WaSH integration are key principles of Ethiopia’s water policy, it was questioned whether they were being implemented in practice.

Participants included WaterAid Ethiopia (WAE), Poverty Action Network Ethiopia (PANE), Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), Italian Development Cooperation (IDC), and Finland Embassy (FE).

FLoWS was launched in May 2008. It is led by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) in close collaboration with other key sector institutions and with support from the RiPPLE programme.

The full report of the 3rd FLoWS meeting will be made available soon on the RiPPLE and MoWR websites.

Source: RiPPLE blog posts by bterefe and Tamene, 03 Dec 2008