The South African water sector has made strides in providing access to water and sanitation since the post-Apartheid era. Municipalities have programs, plans and funding that seek to address challenges such as non-revenue water. However, despite these efforts, the country is facing a water crisis. The reasons are poor financial and technical performance of municipal water departments and diminishing water resources because of climate change.

There is an opportunity for this project to make a positive contribution for South Africa as a whole by providing a model on how to systematically tackle these issues for secondary cities.

The project aims to contribute to the improvement of the South African water and wastewater sector by enabling secondary municipalities to simultaneously improve their climate resilience, their service delivery, and their responsiveness to the needs of vulnerable groups.

Two secondary cities will be selected in order to implement exemplary reform measures. Through this, a replicable strategy for improved water and wastewater services will be developed.

The ultimate goal is to disseminate this model for implementation in secondary cities across South Africa. However, the actual dissemination is not part of the project – it will be considered as the objective of a second phase of the project if the first phase is successfully completed.

A replicable strategy for low carbon and climate resilient water and wastewater services that is responsive to vulnerable groups is implemented in secondary municipalities in South Africa.

Expected results:  

Measures to enhance water service provision and financial management in the two pilot municipalities (reduction in non-revenue water, measures to improved climate resilience, capacity building for technical management, application of management tools)

Measures to enhance Wastewater Treatment and Sludge Management in the two pilot municipalities (improved energy efficiency, development of project concepts for low carbon and/or resilient-infrastructure projects)

Improved high-level, inter-departmental policy dialogue in the water sector via the Sector Dialogue Forum, which allows for cooperation and alignment of policy objectives