Reporting the status of water and sanitation in South Africa to AMCOW

Recognizing the critical role monitoring and reporting plays in rational decision-making for water and sanitation sector development, AMCOW has implemented water and sanitation monitoring and reporting system (‘M&E system’) for Africa based on a common framework of indicators and methodologies (and aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) process and associated indicators). The project seeks to address the structural weaknesses in national data and information management and monitoring systems and the lack of credible regular reporting on the state of the water resources and sanitation. Emanti assisted DWS to collate/gather required data and successfully submit the data to the Pan-Africa Water Monitoring and Reporting website (which was established to assist with data loading and performance monitoring) by the required deadline.

A key observation of relevance is that data gaps do exist, and that there is therefore a need to mobilise various sector role-players to start measuring/monitoring/reporting data required to generate all required AMCOW indicators. Establishing appropriate mechanisms in South Africa for easy and transparent sharing and validation of data is critical for ensuring successful participation in AMCOW and other international reporting programmes. Furthermore, the use of proxy indicators as a possible interim solution to measure performance where no specific data currently exits for a required indicator should also be considered.