With a population of more than 25 million people and a steady economic growth averaging 6.6% over the last few years, Ghana has been the development success story of Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, Ghana is also one of the worst performing countries in the region regarding sanitation coverage. The Sanitation Challenge for Ghana (www.sanitationchallenge4ghana.org) aims at tackling this issue in an innovative way.

The Sanitation Challenge for Ghana is a competition running from November 2015 to December 2018 opened to Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana. The challenge, which is part of the DFID-funded ‘Ideas to impact’ programme, includes a series of monetary prizes and honorary awards. These will incentivise MMDAs in Ghana to design and implement liquid waste management strategies to bring transformational changes to city-wide sanitation services in urban centres.

Our programme was launched on the World Toilet Day in Accra by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. To support the launch we recently conducted three zonal workshops in Tamale, Kumasi and Koforidua. More than 600 representatives from MMDAs across Ghana attendedg and there has been great enthusiasm around the idea of a challenge to improve urban sanitation.

We are planning to organise an event for donors, NGOs, the private sector and innovators in Accra in January, in order to promote the collaboration between MMDAs and those actors. It is hoped that those actors will provide technical and financial support to the MMDAs during the preparation and implementation of their liquid waste management strategies. They might also contribute to the development of innovative ideas for urban sanitation.

It will be very exciting to see which innovative ideas the MMDAs will include in their liquid waste management strategies, which will be submitted by the end of April.

The Challenge was designed by Trémolet Consulting, with support from Maple Consult, under contract to IMC Worldwide who manage the Ideas to Impact Programme on behalf of DFID. The challenge is hosted by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development with day to day management provided by IRC Ghana / Water Health Solutions who are the contracted local implementing agent.