Next to air - on the list of essential human needs - is water. And while water resources are abundant, convenient, safe and reliable water services can be hard to come by. Throughout the developing world, including here in Ghana, governments construct large water plants and piped networks to serve cities. In rural areas, many boreholes have been drilled in an effort to increase safe water supply. In many cases, this water infrastructure breaks down after only a few years due to lack of maintenance and lack of funding for long-term management. As a result, inequalities in access to safe water persist. 

In partnership with Access Development Ghana (AD Ghana), Water4 came to Wassa East District in 2015 with a different vision: to carry out a district-wide safe water coverage plan using an enterprise-based approach. This idea received support from Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, World Vision, and other partners who had a similar vision for district-wide coverage. Thanks to these partnerships, today we can say that we are now more than halfway to achieving this goal. 

Our approach, which uses enterprise-based solutions to reach an entire district with safe water access, is very innovative and quite unique here in Ghana. AD Ghana is providing safe water services, tailored to consumer demand, at a price that is affordable to the consumer while also allowing the enterprise to work towards financial sustainability. We believe this is a viable way to move forward in Ghana, whereby Metropolitan Municipal District Assemblies can supply safe and sustainable water to their communities through the support of a local enterprise. This is exactly what we are working towards in Wassa East to ensure that NUMA® branded water, developed by Water4 and distributed by AD Ghana, becomes available to almost every community across the entire district. 

We look forward to December 2020 when we can say that we have covered at least 90% of the entire population of the district with access to safe and reliable water. This will be a first for Ghana, but not the last. We envision using Wassa East as a model for achieving district coverage in additional districts across Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa in the future.

Thank you all for the support that has allowed us to achieve this success.