Evidence Use for Improved Sanitation in Ghana

Civil society has a long history of supporting service delivery in Ghana through the provision of financial support, conducting research, providing technical advisory support, designing and implementing projects and other initiatives. The sanitation sector has been a particular area of focus for civil society support because of the poor levels of service delivery and, particularly, inequities in sanitation provision in the country. In 2015, the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)1 ranked Ghana as the second lowest in the world, with only 15% of the population provided with basic sanitation. These services only reached 1% of the poor, 19% of which practised open defecation (Ntow, 2019; World Health Organisation (WHO) & United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2017). With the support of civil society and development partners, there have been improvements in basic sanitation service provision, which moved from 15% in 2015 to an estimated 21% in 2018 (Ghana Statistical Service, 2018).

This policy brief draws on the lessons emerging from a case study that explored the role of civil society in promoting the use of evidence in strengthening the performance of the sanitation sector in Ghana. The case focuses on two initiatives promoted by an NGO, the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana): the I Am Aware (IAA) initiative and the District League Table (DLT).