Strengthening water quality monitoring systems in Asutifi North, Ghana

In Asutifi North, a mostly rural (68%) district in central Ghana with a population of ~65,000, the Aquaya Institute is working within existing water service provision structures to enhance the use of water quality testing for the assurance of publicly provided safe drinking water. To learn how to effectively strengthen safe water service provision in Asutifi North, Aquaya has employed a systematic, research-driven strategy that can be instructive for water stakeholders in other low resource contexts. Aquaya’s approach includes several steps: 1) institutional mapping, 2) embedding a researcher, 3) field data collection, 4) economic and feasibility assessment, 5) shortlisting intervention, 6) select and test intervention(s) with local stakeholders, 7) propose water quality testing structures to district stakeholders, 8) build a water quality monitoring system, and 9) evaluate efficacy, improve and sustain. Aquaya presents how this process was employed and led to the selection of a system strengthening approach to improve one aspect of water service provision and how it addresses key sustainability constraints that other water quality monitoring interventions commonly overlook. [author abstract]