Benin
Benin is a country with a low income per capital (800 dollars/year). The population in 2019 was around 12 million inhabitants. The WASH indicators measured in Benin show that in terms of sanitation, 68.8% of households in rural areas have no access to sanitation facilities and only 6.4% of households have access to unshared improved sanitation, while 24.9% of rural households have unimproved sanitation facilities (EDS, 2017-2018). In terms of hygiene, a large proportion of rural households (77.4%) have no access to any hygiene facility and 6% of them have access to basic hygiene facilities (JMP 2017).
About WASH Alliance Benin
The goal of the Benin WASH Alliance is that, in 2030, each Beninese enjoys the right to water, hygiene and sanitation with the support of the Benin WASH Alliance which ensures its effectiveness and its durability.
To achieve this goal, the WASH Benin Alliance wanted a formal, democratically governed alliance, with the confidence of partners and aspiring to financial autonomy. In 2016, the Benin WASH Alliance received official recognition from the Government and has adopted regulatory texts. Seventeen national and international NGOs are members of the AWB. But due to lack of financial support, members can no longer meet regularly and do not have joint activities as it was in the years before 2016.
Currently, members conduct their WASH activities by joining projects funded by international organizations such as UNICEF, Medical Care Development International (MCDI) and OmiDelta. Their activities are in Sanitation, eradicating open-air defecation, hygiene in schools, drinking water supply and IWRM.
Some highlights of our work so far
Lobby and Advocacy
In Benin, we place much emphasis on lobbying for higher WASH funding. Especially as local governments had limited access to and were unable to mobilize their portion of the Support Fund for Municipality Development or “Fonds d’Appui au Développement Communal (FADeC)” assigned to drinking water, hygiene and sanitation. To address this challenge, we financially contributed to a project that aims at building capacities of local governments to design their own WASH projects and to raise their own funds. The fundamental result of this advocacy work is that parts of the national WASH Budget are now transferred to the local governments.
Hygiene campaigns
Over the last years, we have significantly increased the number of people, especially in rural areas, that are aware of the need to develop and use improved sanitation facilities such as wash-areas connected to sumps. We were able to do so mainly through numerous hygiene media campaigns.
