In Uganda, the GSF is teaming with the national government to find creative ways to raise the level of sanitation and hygiene in the country. The GSF programme in Uganda is referred to as the Uganda Sanitation Fund (USF). Following the August 2011 signing of the Grant Support Agreement between the Government of Uganda and UNOPS, the programme has come off to a good start with activities already ongoing in 16 Districts.
After years of working successfully with the international community to increase the availability of clean water in the country, the Government of Uganda has found the sanitation sector falling behind. The government has developed policies and personnel to address the challenge, but money has been lacking for implementation.
The GSF has now become one part of the solution and the Uganda Sanitation Fund works with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to implement a programme making maximum use of existing capacity set up at central and district level. The aim is to create robust demand for sanitation to the point that people seek out creative ways to install toilets in their communities.
The USF programme is managed according to Uganda’s long Term Institutional Arrangement for the management of all funds within the Ministry of Health, which is appointed as Executing Agency. The National Sanitation Working Group (NSWG) appointed a sub-committee specifically responsible for USF to act as the Programme Coordinating Mechanism (PCM). Deloitte Uganda ltd is the GSF Country Programme Monitor (CPM).
The sub-grantees in Uganda are composed of 16 district local governments, supported by NGOs active in their respective geographical areas. The USF programme area has a total target population of 3.8 million; the majority of the 6,000 programme area villages are currently not declared ODF, and a total of 200,000 (32 percent) households do not use sanitation facilities.
The work in these 16 districts will consist of government, NGO and private sector actors promoting demand-led approaches (including but not limited to Community-led Total Sanitation), carrying out home improvement campaigns and sanitation marketing. The main purpose will be to scale up efforts to generate demand for improved sanitation and hygiene, and to strengthen the supply chain for appropriate sanitation products and services to meet this demand while creating an enabling environment for a sustainable change.
