USAID Urban Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
In the face of rapid urbanization and ongoing political unrest, Ethiopia’s secondary cities face significant challenges in meeting citizens’ needs while contending with overstretched resources, especially for essential WASH services. Ensuring that strong and reliable WASH services are available to everyone is paramount, especially within vulnerable communities. In addition, water and sanitation services must adapt to changing conditions due to climate change and growing inequality.
USAID’s Urban WASH project primarily focuses on private sector and civil society WASH actors, particularly in the early stages of implementation. It supports citywide inclusive sanitation and tackles key constraints within the entire urban WASH system, such as lack of public financing and national budgeting, that have created barriers to expanding sanitation services, particularly for women, girls, and low-income communities. The project will improve WASH infrastructure, integrate citywide inclusive sanitation into municipal WASH planning and management, and improve access to financing and subsidies for WASH services. Urban WASH will also co-create several trial interventions with partner service providers and counterparts to adapt and test viable approaches and service delivery models in other parts of Ethiopia to determine the best approaches to scale and implementation over the remaining period of performance.
By tackling key constraints within the urban WASH system, the project strives to increase access to and strengthen WASH services across Ethiopia.
