Access to sanitation services is one of the crucial challenges for most African countries. The quality and coverage of services by sanitation operators are inadequate due to many factors, including institutional fragmentation, lack of leadership of policy and decision makers, weak regulatory frameworks, poor skills in management, operation and maintenance of sanitation systems, and lack of sustainable financing models for on-going service provision. Since 2006, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on water and sanitation recognized the WOP (Water Operators' Partnerships) approach - which fosters capacity building and knowledge sharing through partnerships of water and sanitation operators - as an effective means of improving the performance of the operators and fast-track progress in achieving the MDGs for water and sanitation services. Rather than substituting public operators with private entities and expertise, as is commonly done in public-private partnerships (PPPs), WOPs rely on not-for-profit exchange and peer-to-peer learning to strengthen the performance of public water and sanitation utilities. Thanks to the funding and technical support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the African Water Association (AfWA), launched from 2015-2019, the “Reinforcing Capacity of African Sanitation Operators on non-sewer and FSM systems through peer-to-peer learning partnerships (RASOP-Africa) project aiming at improving the quality of urban faecal sludge management and non-sewer sanitation services and coverage for at least one million people in the Sub-Saharan Africa region through improving strategic sanitation planning, development of sustainable projects, and institutionalization of sustainable operational and financing framework for sanitation in the utilities and/or municipalities.

Building on this SOPs experience an achievement, AfWA has benefited since July 2020 a new investment by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand the approach to other African cities and AfWA members in order to contribute to the SDGs and the overall urban sanitation agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa following the city-wide inclusive sanitation approach. This will be done in its new program entitled “Strengthening AfWA and operators’ capacity for the implementation of city-wide inclusive sanitation in Africa”.