Water and sanitation

Improving water supply and access to adequate sanitation has always been one of the priorities of development cooperation between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Cabo Verde. Significant results have been achieved in strengthening municipal water services, promoting autonomous sanitation, establishing an inter-municipal water company (Brava and Fogo) and, more recently, supporting sector reform.

Since 2012, the Cabo Verde government implemented a major reform of the Water and Sanitation sector, which led to the creation of a national agency for water and sanitation (ANAS) in charge of managing the entire sector. Luxembourg Development Cooperation programmes are aligned with these priorities through its Support to the Action Plan for an Integrated Water Resources Management and Water and sanitation programmes.

The Water and sanitation programme will support the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment and ANAS as institutions responsible for the implementation of national policy as well as the municipalities of Fogo, Brava and Santiago, inter-municipal companies, private sector actors and households.

The Water and sanitation programme was formulated in early 2016 and implementation began in June 2016 for a 50-month period. It is structured around three specific objectives:

• specific objective 1 aims to improve the financial sustainability of the sector, mobilisation and implementation of available financial resources and the production of sectoral monitoring data through support to ANAS;
• specific objective 2 aims to make the supply of drinking water and sanitation services to companies focusing on three islands more efficient. The entry points for this purpose are improving energy efficiency and maximising operating revenues;
• specific objective 3 aims to quantitatively and qualitatively improve service provision by the sanitation institutions. The purpose of this is to strengthen the capacities of stakeholders and to implement the most promising methodologies that have successfully tested, particularly in the context of complementary Luxembourg programmes, including PromoSan and EPS.