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Overview of findings from the Accra Workshop, 30th April, 2019

The current sanitation sector in Ghana is the main responsibility of District Assemblies in terms of service delivery, yet it is a sector that cuts across several ministries such as the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Water, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources. Despite the raised profile of sanitation since the current President came to power, it remains a largely unfunded mandate of District Assemblies.

Sanitation is a broad concept encompassing several services of which solid waste management tends to take the limelight in attention and budget because of its visibility, ie: mountains of litter on side-walks invites rats and mice and becomes a source of easily transmittable diseases.

The Liquid Waste division of EHSD indicated that the Ministry has two main systems for monitoring sanitation.

Twende Mbele, CLEAR-AA and GMEF, through the process mentioned above, identified a consistent challenge in tracking performance monitoring indicators within the Sanitation sector in Ghana. The challenge lies in the inability of the state to tap into existing sources of evidence generation where administrative data or census figures are lacking in the sector. This constraint may be attributed to government systems lacking effective mechanisms for fostering relationships with a broader set of stakeholders, such as universities, the private sector, VOPEs and civil society.

The project explored the opportunities for the use of CSO generated evidence to increase the capacity of government to monitor the Sanitation sector in Ghana through the strengthening and widening of performance indicators. The following working paper offers insight into the methods, tools and processes required to foster collaboration betwee

The sanitation sector in Ghana has many different actors and stakeholders. They include government agencies, private sector providers, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, non-gov-ernmental organizations and CSOs, development partners, bilateral and multilateral organizations. The activities carried out by these actors are not all reported. Where these are reported, it is not always done using the right indicators or passed through the appropriate channels. Agencies operating outside the mainstream government agencies are reported to be the most culpable. This omission does undermine the sanitation policy making process as it is denied rich information necessary to ensure effective policy.

The compilation of this report followed a review of key sector documents and conducted key informant interviews, consultative meetings with major sector actors, and a validation workshop. The central role of local government authorities as agencies entrusted with the primary responsibility for sanitation has been examined, The presents outcomes of a systematic review of landmark sanitation policies, systems for an-alyzing sanitation data including Basic Sanitation Information System (BaSIS) and the policy formulation platforms such as “NALLAP” and the Mole series, process and active roles CSOs continue to play in Ghana. The importance of various schemes and organizational development tools designed to improve the plan-ning and effective delivery of sanitation services and their limitations such as “FOAT”, “DPA” and “DLT” have been discussed.

This webinar discussed some of the Lessons & Achievement of building a robust M&E system in Uganda. Highlighting the government’s reform policies and mechanisms instituted to effectively collect and analyze data/information, evaluate, improve and control its performance.

This webinar explored how the relationship between governments and CSOs has been affected by the pandemic, and the uptake of evidence for use in response to the pandemic with lessons learnt. A central question to be explored is ‘have governments learnt to reply on CSOs for information (and evidence more broadly) as a crisis response?’