Saha Global and the Ministry of Works, Housing and Water Resources in collaboration with Resource Centre Network, are hosting a national session on:

Driving Access and Equity in Water: Enabling Environment for Last-Mile Communities in Ghana

This session will discuss insights from Saha Global’s last mile service delivery approach with a specific emphasis on the financial challenges and realities of serving small, scattered, and hard to reach rural communities in Ghana. The Ministry will then lead a workshop-style discussion session to explore innovative and practical financing mechanisms that can support consistent safe water delivery to last mile communities.

The session aims to advocate for and support the Ministry in developing frameworks that ensure equitable access to safe water for all, leaving no one behind.

Join sector professionals for a vibrant discourse.

Programme

Session Brief

Background

Access to safe drinking water is recognized by the Government of Ghana as a fundamental human right and a critical public health necessity. While substantial progress has been made in urban and peri-urban areas—thanks to government initiatives and private sector participation—many last-mile communities remain severely underserved. These communities are typically small, remote, and low-income, making water service delivery both challenging and costly.

According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (2022), over 2 million people in rural Ghana still need to be served with safe water. Addressing this gap requires bold thinking—both in innovating service delivery models and reimagining sustainable financing mechanisms that can work in these hard-to-reach areas.

This NALLAP session will convene key stakeholders in the water sector to explore what it takes to build an enabling environment that guarantees safe, reliable, and equitable water access for all, especially those living in Ghana’s last-mile communities.

Objectives

This presentation aims to:

This session will be co-hosted by Saha Global and the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources, through the Water Directorate. It will include two main segments:

1. Experience Sharing – Saha Global
   Saha Global will share insights from over 15 years of delivering safe water to last-mile communities through a women-led service model. The presentation will highlight the realities — both operational and financial — of sustaining water access in some of Ghana’s most underserved communities.

1. Workshop Discussion – Water Directorate, MSWR.
   Following the presentation, the Water Directorate will lead an interactive, workshop-style discussion. This will offer participants the opportunity to collaboratively explore innovative and practical financing mechanisms for last-mile water delivery. The goal is to surface actionable ideas that can inform national efforts to strengthen equity in water access.

With over 2 million Ghanaians still relying on unsafe water sources, the sector must find new ways to ensure no community is left behind. This session will provide a space to align experience, policy, and innovation around one of the most persistent challenges in the WASH sector: reaching the last mile.

To achieve this, there is the need to increase awareness, improve practice in HWTS and use of appropriate and effective technologies (Republic of Ghana, 2014) such as siphon filters, ceramic filters and biosand filters. It is these settings that the household water treatment (HWT) and safe storage can serve as an important interim measure to make drinking water safer. Health gains from HWT and safe storage can only be achieved when treatment products are effective in removing pathogens from drinking water and are used correctly and consistently. To address this need, the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR), World Health Organisation (WHO, Ghana) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, Ghana), developed a standard and certification scheme to support importers and manufacturers of HWT products in Ghana.

These standards and certification include:

• GS 1331:2022, Requirements for Performance of Household Water Treatment Products and Technologies – Pathogen Removal
• GSA-PCM-STI-1331:2023, Scheme of Testing and Inspection for Certification of Household Water Treatment Products and Technologies for Pathogen Removal in accordance with GS 1331:2022

The standard outlines the criteria that HWTP must meet to be considered effective in removing or inactivating harmful microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. This session has an objective of raising awareness and promote the adoption of the developed standard among key WASH stakeholders, including government bodies, manufacturers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs) and the general public.

The goal is to ensure that HWTPs available in the market meet the minimum microbiological performance criteria, thereby safeguarding public health.

The session is to achieve the following outcomes:

• Increased Awareness among stakeholders.
• Enhanced Compliance among manufacturers.
• Improved Public Health.

The dissemination of the Standard on Microbiological Performance of HWTP is crucial to ensuring that these products effectively safeguard public health. It would also provide the necessary tools and knowledge and create awareness among the general public for widespread adoption of the standard and thereby contributing to safer drinking water for all

The National Level Learning Alliance Platform (NLLAP), a WASH stakeholder learning platform will be used to undertake this activity.