The Tripartite Partnership (TPP) Project is a three-year collaborative approach involving Ghanaian and Dutch partners that aims at developing innovative management models for delivering water, sanitation and hygiene services to the urban poor in Ghana.

In Ghana the poor constitute between 40-70% of the urban population in most cities. Poor urban settlements are often informal and unplanned and are often not covered by city mains. Water and sanitation are unreliable, inaccessible and oversubscribed. These communities mostly meet their water needs mainly through intermediaries – yard taps, community outlets; vendors etc and buy by the bucket at rates up to 15 times the recommended tariffs. Often sanitation is characterised by poorly maintained communal toilets, unimproved on-site latrines, poor drainage and wastewater disposal.

The TPP seeks to develop knowledge on innovative management models in recognition of the fact that

(i) Problems of WASH services delivery are multi-sectoral in nature and the complexity of problems means simple public private partnership (PPP) models are not enough in creating an enabling environment for pro-poor service delivery. Instead multi-stakeholder partnerships that recognise the roles of Local Authorities, NGOS, CBOs are more feasible; and

(ii) Currently, some projects that seek to develop new approaches for WASH services delivery in poor urban areas have started through the effort of organizations like PURC, AVRL and WaterAid.

The key sector challenge is to document experiences, develop more innovative approaches through pilot projects and use new knowledge to develop knowledge products, tools and strategies that could be applied at scale.  

The objectives of the project are twofold:

(i) To identify and test a range of different management models for providing water services to the Urban Poor; and

(ii) To support the creation of the enabling environment (policy, regulation etc.) necessary for these models to be widely scaled up.

There are two main phases for the projects:

· Phase 1 (Year 1) will consist of establishing a national level structure (National Level LA), carrying out initial mapping of existing situation with water services delivery, documentation of existing experiences, identification of promising pilot areas, and the development of tools for the piloting; and

· Phase 2 (Years 2 and 3) will consist of piloting and documentation of lessons learned. ‘Piloting’, might be in either ongoing or in new towns. Activities will likely include : (i) establishing local LA platforms; (ii) capacity building; (iii) testing and further refining models (guidelines etc.); (IV) establishment/strengthening of training capacity (for example through institute of LG training) etc.

The Project will mainly look at water supply but will also focus on sanitation/drainage. Multi-stakeholder platforms (Learning Alliances) will be established at national and local levels to serve as a central tool for ensuring stakeholder involvement in project planning and implementation. Knowledge dissemination and advocacy activities will be central ongoing activities throughout programme. The target areas will be towns and cities with population of 10,000 and above.

TREND Group, the main implementing Agency will work closely with core partner groups involving CONIWAS, PRUSPA, and the Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) with the support of IRC.

For further information please contact:

The Team Leader, TPP Project
P. O. Box CT 6135
Cantonments, Accra, Ghana

Office Location: H/No C218/14, Wawa Close, Dzorwulu, Accra
Tel.: 233-21-769552
Fax: 233-21-769583
Email: info@trend-gh.org
eugenelarbi@yahoo.co.uk