Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene 2014 Sept - Oct Vol. 9 No.5 | Page 5

NEWS in brief
AWF Promotes Multiple Use Water
Services to Increase Access to
Water of Rural and Peri-urban
Communities in South Africa
The African Water Facility (AWF) offered on August 20,
2014 a €1.3 million grant to the Water Research Commission
of the Republic of South Africa to improve water delivery
services, an initiative that will be supported and driven by
the beneficiary communities of Limpopo province. Over
20,000 people are expected to get improved access to water
for domestic and agriculture purposes, among others.
The project proposes to implement the holistic Multiple
Use Services (MUS) approach to overcome water
challenges faced by many South African households. Most
rural and peri-urban communities in South Africa rely on
ill-suited, single-use water services to sustain a variety of
activities such as small-scale agriculture, household chores
and cooking.
On the contrary, the MUS is a low-cost water service
approach proposing systems that take into account people’s
multiple water needs as a starting point of planning, which
leads to designs that can provide water services for a variety
of uses all at once.
“The unreliability and unpredictability of access to water
in Limpopo province, which is aggravated by climate
change and population growth, poses tremendous water
challenges to the most vulnerable communities,” explained
Akissa Bahri, Coordinator of the African Water Facility.
“This project will not only bring much needed multipleuse water services for rural and peri-urban communities
in the region, but create local knowledge of the MUS
approach and of best practices in providing water services
in line with the principles of Integrated Water Resources
Management.” The infrastructure to be built will include
wells and boreholes, rainwater harvesting structures
and water treatment technologies and will be used to
demonstrate, establish local evidence of the value of the
multi-use approach, and develop models for future upscaling throughout South Africa. In addition, the project
is expected to strengthen capacities for water planning and
development within communities, local governments and
other stakeholders in the region.
The estimated total cost of the project is €1.7 milli