A prize to reward excellence in urban liquid waste management in Ghana.
Published on: 04/09/2020
The Sanitation Challenge for Ghana (SC4Gh) Prize was launched on World Toilet Day, 19th November 2015 as a component of the Ideas to Impact global initiative to stimulate competition among Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and to encourage inclusive partnership for the design and implementation of liquid waste management (LWM) strategies.
In 2017, the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources launched the Prize for Private Sector and Non-State Actors alongside the SC4Gh to induce the private sector to partner with the competing MMDAs to improve LWM and to influence innovations, expertise and investments in the target localities.
The SC4Gh for MMDAs was funded by DFID-UK and the Prize for Private Sector and Non-State Actors by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The prize competition took place from November 2015 to July 2019 under the auspices of the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources with technical support from IRC Ghana, IMC Worldwide and Maple Consult.
The SC4Gh Prize for MMDAs was in two stages. The design of MMDA LWM strategies constituted the first stage and the implementation of the strategies the second stage. At the end of stage 1, on 30 April 2016, 48 of the 127 MMDAs who registered for the competition submitted their strategies for adjudication. 21 of the 48 MMDAs excelled and were duly recognised with honorary prizes with 3 winning a total of GBP 75,000 in monetary awards.
All 21 MMDA were invited to express interest to participate in the implementation of their winning strategies; and 17 of the 21 MMDAs met the minimum condition and were considered for stage 2. At this stage, the prize for private sector and non-state actors was also introduced.
At the end of the stage 2 process on March 27, 2019, 15 of the 17 MMDAs and 14 of the over 60 registered private sector and non-state actors submitted their final implementation reports. These were screened and passed to an independent Verification Agent to verify the reports and subsequently to a panel of international and local judges for online and live judging to determine the deserving winners.
At the grand dignified city award on July 24, 2019 at the Marriott Hotel in Accra, 9 MMDAs and 6 private partners were announced and presented with a total prize value of GBP 1,285,000 and US$ 225,000 respectively - for excellence in the implementation of urban liquid waste management strategies and exploring inclusive partnership to influence innovations, expertise and investments in the target localities towards bringing transformational changes to city-wide sanitation service delivery.
The video below presents a snapshot of the SC4Gh events leading to the award and the Grand Dignified City Award ceremony, which took place on July 24, 2019 in Accra, Ghana.
