The Water and Development Alliance (WADA) is a collaboration between the USAID and The Coca-Cola Company and its Foundations, managed by the Global Environment & Technology Foundation, to promote improved water management and expand clean water access to help build sustainable communities in the developing world.
The remote residents of Egypt’s North Sinai Peninsula are members of several ancient Bedouin tribes, which for centuries moved across the desert searching for water. Now, thanks to a $50 million partnership between USAID and the Government of Egypt, the water will instead be coming to them.
Egypt today is a country in transition. With one of the fastest growing populations in the world — estimates suggest that the population will increase from 93 to 120 million people by 2030 — Egypt’s infrastructure needs to keep pace. In both urban and rural areas, population growth has led to an expansion of settlements that strain current water and wastewater systems.
The Middle East and North Africa has less than two percent of the world’s renewable water supply. In fact, it is the world’s driest region, threatening sustainable agriculture, hydration, and sanitation.
The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have created a unique partnership to address community water needs in developing countries around the world.
MAWRED's activity objective was to support regional policy makers in current and future water and agriculture resource planning. NASA worked closely with ICBA as a regional institution, providing tools and training to ICBA’s staff on the use of NASA’s technologies. In return, ICBA provided similar trainings and hands-on capacity building to a range of regional organizations within the participating countries and institutions, building on the working partnership between USAID, NASA and the World Bank, which was established in 2008.
The Regional Partnership for Culture and Development (RPCD) was a three-year, $7.2 million program funded by USAID/Egypt’s Office of Middle East Programs (OMEP).The goal of the program was to gather and disseminate information that will improve development efforts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Despite massive infrastructure investments, nearly millions of citizens in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region lack adequate access to potable water. Wastewater management in some areas is markedly worse. Once water-balanced MENA countries are now running water deficits. Regional governments and local utilities agree that the benefits of multimillion-dollar infrastructure investments will be short-lived without proper operations and maintenance (O&M) management by a capable and qualified workforce.
The regional water problems in MENA countries are rather universal, vary in intensity and impact, but share common problems in water scarcity, poor investment in water services to the poor, and limited coverage in water supply and sanitation. The priority challenge in this region is to extend basic water services to the millions of households, especially in the rural areas.
