A Rwandan who was recently appointed as new Executive Secretary of African water body- African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) based in Abuja says he is ready to start his new responsibilities.
Dr Canisius Kanangire was recently appointed at the General Assembly of AMCOW that was held on the sidelines of the 6th Africa Water Week that saw a change of guards as Gerson Lwenge, Tanzania’s water and irrigation minister also took over the presidency of the AMCOW from Senegal’s Amadou Mansour Faye.
“My main priorities will be to strengthen the AMCOW Secretariat in order to increase the visibility of the African water body. I will also seek to boost stakeholders’ confidence in AMCOW as a relevant, vital institution in formulation and harmonisation of policies at the continental level,” Kanangire told The New Times by telephone from Kenya, yesterday.
Dr Canisius said his main agenda will be strengthening and advocating for resource allocation and cooperation so as to achieve universal water and sanitation service delivery as socio-economic development of Africans.
Rwanda is fronting the “Kigali Action Plan” (KAP), a 2014 plan by the African Union aimed at improving access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene across Africa.
The KAP program is envisioned in improving the livelihoods of five million people in 10 African Union member states and is aiming at mobilising a part of the required money by fronting water and sanitation projects in Africa by adopting a crowd funding platform.
The 2014 AU Summit that took place in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, selected Burundi, Chad ,Central Africa Republic, Lesotho, Madagascar, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone ,Mauritania and South Sudan as beneficiaries of the Kigali Action Plan.
Kanangire, initially the executive secretary of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC), one of the eight key institutions of the East African Community (EAC) coordinating interventions on the Lake and its Basin, will take over from Gambia’s Bai-Mass Taal, who leaves AMCOW after eight years of service.
Holders of the office have a four year mandate, renewable only once.
Dr Kanangire intends to travel to AMCOW headquarters situated in Abuja next week for a familiarisation tour before he fully relocates to start work in September.
Prior to joining the LVBC, Kanangire worked as Head of Strategic Planning and Management at the Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat in Uganda.
The 6th edition of the Africa Water Week is a political commitment at the highest level for establishing a platform to deliberate and collectively get solutions to the continent’s water and sanitation problems.
African water ministers, while in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, adopted a roadmap titled “the Dar es Salaam Roadmap for achieving the N’gor Commitments on Water Security and Sanitation in Africa” geared at achieving sustainable and universal access to safe water and sanitation across Africa.
The Dar es Salaam roadmap is aimed at ensuring coherence in implementation of policy, increasing gender, equity and social inclusion, and borderless cooperation in Africa.
The roadmap also stresses the importance of innovative financing and budgetary allocation for the water sector, sanitation and monitoring.
