Firmly grounded in proven practices, Breakthrough ACTION works in partnership with governments, civil society, and communities around the world to implement creative and sustainable SBC programming, nurture SBC champions, mainstream new techniques and technologies, and advocate strategic and sustained investment in SBC.
REGIS-ER is a five year project financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Its objectives are to enhance the resilience of the peoples of Niger and Burkina Faso, to improve their food security, and to reduce their vulnerability to climate change-triggered events that lead to frequent humanitarian assistance requirements. REGIS-ER addresses the pillars of food security (availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability) as part of the process of reducing vulnerability of populations in marginal agro-pastoral regions of the Sahel.
CONTEXT
Burkina Faso and Niger are the focus countries for USAID’s resilience agenda in the Sahel. USAID coordinates all of its programs with the Government of Burkina Faso, other donors—particularly G7 member countries under the New Alliance for Nutrition and Food Security—and regional organizations such as the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
APPROACH
The West Africa Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene Program (WA-WASH), implemented from 2011 to 2017, introduced innovative and low-cost water and sanitation technologies, and promoted appropriate hygienic behaviors at the community level. The program also developed practical models of sustainable WASH service delivery; and increases the capacity of national and regional institutions to replicate these approaches and models throughout the region.
With increasing rates of population growth and urbanization, infrastructure in African cities, such as water delivery systems and wastewater systems, can be overwhelmed. Poor governance, chronic underinvestment and a lack of skilled staff make it difficult for urban water utilities to provide safe drinking water to consumers. However, experience suggests that strong leadership and institutions, coupled with preventative risk-based management approaches and sustained capacity-building efforts, are critical to improving the quality of drinking water services in African cities.
Context
West Africa’s Sahel is an arid band stretching 1.1 million square miles. Made up of four countries—Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, and Niger—this zone’s mix of deeply rooted chronic poverty, food insecurity, limited rainfall, and recurrent drought drive the same vulnerable communities into crisis year after year.
CONTEXT
Following repeated large-scale humanitarian emergencies in the Sahel, USAID recognized that continuing to treat these recurrent crises as acute emergencies is extremely costly and does not effectively address their underlying causes.
Following repeated large-scale humanitarian emergencies in the Sahel Region USAID recognized that continuing to treat these recurrent crises as acute emergencies is extremely costly and does not effectively address their underlying causes. Thus, USAID’s Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE) initiative realigned existing and new humanitarian and development assistance efforts to strengthen resilience in agro-pastoral and marginal agriculture livelihood zones of the Sahel.
