Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene September - October 2016 Vol. 11 No.4 | Page 20

Press Release

on which interest or other charges on the Loan will fall due
in accordance with the Loan Agreement, after the expiration
of the said grace period. The Loan bears interest at the rate
of 1.5% per annum, in addition to a service charge of 0.5%
per annum to meet administrative costs and other expenses
related to the implementation of the Loan Agreement.
This loan represents the 42nd loan made by Kuwait Fund
for the financing of projects in the Arab Republic of
Egypt, as the Fund has previously made 41 loans to the
Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt or to entities
which are subordinate to it, to finance projects in various
sectors, with a total amount of about Kuwaiti Dinars
751 Million (equivalent to about US$ 2.533 Billion). The

Fund also provided nine grants and technical assistance
allocations to Egypt with a total amount of about Kuwaiti
Dinars 2.99 Million (equivalent to about US$ 10.17
Million) allocated for financing technical and economic
feasibility studies for certain projects, and financing other
activities. Kuwait Fund also administered two Grants
provided by the Government of the State of Kuwait to
the Arab Republic of Egypt with a total amount of about
Kuwaiti Dinars 4.8 Million (equivalent to about US$16.8
Million) for the purpose of reconstruction of some
schools that were affected by earthquake in 1992, and the
reconstruction of some villages that were damaged by
floods in 1995.

IRC helps AMCOW develop a new process to monitor the
N’gor declaration

A

t the 2016 Africa Water Week, civil society called on
the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW)
to honour the region’s commitments on water, sanitation
and hygiene, including those agreed in the 2015 N’gor
declaration. The four partner organizations in Watershed
- empowering citizens, Akvo, IRC, Simavi and Wetlands
International, were among those that endorsed the
collective statement submitted to AMCOW by the African
Network for Water (ANEW).
Progress especially on sanitation has so far been poor; only
4% between from 2000 to 2015, according to Al-hassan
Adam from End Water Poverty. A recent IRC/WSUP
finance brief stated that only eight African countries
provide data on sanitation expenditure. All of them are
falling behind on their N’gor declaration commitment
to spend 0.5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

18

Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • September - October 2016

on sanitation. Exerting pressure to speed up progress
on sanitation is an obvious task for those civil society
organizations (CSOs) that Watershed aims to support.
Next to lobbying AMCOW to honour its sanitation
commitments, IRC is also advising the ministerial council
on the development of a new process to monitor the
N’gor declaration. The aim of the new monitoring
process is to create reflective dialogue processes at country
and subregional levels and strengthen mechanisms for
accountability to citizens and political leaders informed by
evidence.
So far a Regional Action Plan has been developed, and
indicators and scoring criteria have been reviewed through
a series of sub-regional consultations led by AMCOW in
Nairobi, Dakar and Johannesburg in May and June 2016.
See below an example of an indicator with scoring criteria.