It is widely recognized that insufficient and inadequate access to water and sanitation services has enormous health, economic, and social consequences. Poor water quality continues to pose a major threat to human health. Diarrheal disease alone is responsible for the deaths of 1.8 million people every year (WHO, 2004). It was estimated that 88% of that burden is attributable to unsafe water supply and inadequate sanitation and hygiene and is mostly concentrated on children in developing countries (WHO, 2004). Women and girls spend several hours a day to collect water from distant sources and this translates into significant forgone income for women and impossibility to attend school for girls.
The international community has recognized the critical importance of access to water and sanitation to foster development and has agreed to a number of water and sanitation-related goals, including halving, by 2015, the proportion of people unable to reach or afford safe drinking water and the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation (MDGs, 2000). While, globally, the world is on track to meet the target on drinking water, specific regions, one of which being Sub-Saharan Africa, lag significantly behind, especially in rural areas. Progress on the sanitation goal is even further behind. In response to this, viable credit models for small/medium scale water, sanitation, or hygiene activities, ranging from microfinance to medium-scale community infrastructure or entrepreneurial lending need to be designed and implemented. Furthermore, WA-WASH countries have been proven to be especially vulnerable to the impacts of changes in climate, which include droughts, floods and highly variable rainfall patterns, and the negative consequences for the WASH sector are becoming clearly visible.

The project outcomes required to achieve its goal are captured in the following intermediate results (IRs).
Intermediate Result A: Increased community access to potable water and improved sanitation.
Intermediate Result B: Improved sustainability of WASH services.
Intermediate Result C: Increased income generation and food security outcomes of WASH investments.
Intermediate Result D: Strengthened national and regional enabling environment for integrated WASH.

The WA-WASH Program has been designed to respond directly to Assistance Objectives established by USAID/West Africa and is expected to deliver key outputs and reach beneficiaries in four countries. In particular, the program aims at increasing, directly (hardware activities) and indirectly (software activities), the number of people with access to improved water supply services for household and productive use, as well as the people with access to improved sanitation services. The program will also increase number of people adopting household point-of-use treatment methods/products. Other achievements and outcomes will include: the development, implementation and replication of new, low-cost, demand-driven, and market-based approaches to WASH service delivery for rural and peri-urban populations. WA-WASH will also lead to improvements in operational practices of local government and the private sector in the four countries (including technical, financial, managerial and monitoring aspects); strengthened national and regional enabling environment and capacity to achieve WASH MDGs in West Africa and increased government compliance to regional and international commitments; increased capacity and synergy among WA-WASH regional partnership members for improving the local governance of WASH services.

Ensuring long-term sustainability of program interventions is a cornerstone of all activities in the WA-WASH program. To grant long-term reliability and sustainability of the services provided, efforts addressed to rapidly increase access to safe water and sanitation (hardware component) are complemented by activities aimed at researching and promoting practical and replicable models for WASH service delivery in rural and peri-urban areas (software component). Strong focus is placed on one of the most critical aspects of sustainability: the costs of meeting the water supply and sanitation needs. To this end, innovative and viable financing mechanisms and credit models for small/medium scale water, sanitation, or hygiene activities are researched, developed and tested. On the same note, the program calls for citizens’ action to favor reform of key national policies and to ensure that high priority to water supply, sanitation and hygiene improvement is given at decision-making level.
National, regional, and municipal authorities are involved in planning, allowing them ownership of program activities from the beginning. Communities in the chosen target areas are empowered to assist in the design of management interventions that will adequately meet their diverse needs. Communities are also expected to assist in the financing of chosen interventions through monetary or in-kind contributions, which increased their sense of ownership. Particular attention is paid to developing productive uses of water or income generating activities linked to WATSAN service delivery, thus allowing community members to financially benefit from increased access to WASH. A multi-stakeholder Learning Alliance is also developed to translate lessons learned from this program into new ideas for programs and activities. Creating an enabling environment and strengthening of WASH institutions across the region is a core element of WA-WASH as a means to promote long-term improvements in water service delivery. This objective will be reached through a strategic set of activities focused on institutional assessment and strengthening, capacity building, and knowledge management in West Africa as a whole. Major efforts are undertaken to research, refine and diffuse service delivery models appropriate and effective in the West African context. In summary, a serious commitment to monitoring and evaluation of sustainability factors are being made.