The Guma Valley Water Company of Sierra Leone has become the first water company on the African continent, and only the second in the world, to get an AquaRating certificate, thereby setting an example for other water companies in the rest of Africa.

Water supply in Sierra Leone faces many challenges, including limited access to safe drinking water in around 50% of the country, and even worse in the rural areas. Although the government and various non-governmental organisations have been doing their best, things have not improved much since the end of the civil war in 2002.

The Guma Valley Water Company (GVWC) is in charge of the water supply in Freetown, the capital and largest city with 1 million inhabitants. GWC responded to the challenges of a growing population and growing demand for water from domestic use, industry and agriculture by used AquaRating to establish a baseline of their performance, to inform action plans for improvement, and to enable improvements to be measured over time.

This highlighted the areas that needed significant improvement, such as the technical, financial and commercial aspects of Guma Valley Water Company’s operations, which were found to be unsatisfactory.

There is a huge challenge ahead for GWVC, but by daring to go through the AquaRating process it has demonstrated that business as usual is no longer working for African water utilities.

Important lessons gained from the AquaRating process in Sierra Leone include:

• AquaRating provides a first step in the right direction;
• Commitment from utility stakeholders is key;
• Justification and compliance of procedures need to be documented;
• Money is not always a barrier, often it is a matter of attitude;
• Practical action plans are necessary;
• The importance of documentation and record keeping;
• To improve, you need to understand where you are;
• Transparency and accountability are critical to get stakeholder buy-in;
• Utilities cannot assess and rate themselves unless they have it documented; and
• Utilities need to apply best practices in all areas of their operations.

Few utilities in the world have had the courage to be as transparent as GVWC, and many utilities that applied AquaRating have been reluctant to share their results, but GVWC maintained its commitment to transparency and this bodes well for other water companies in Africa.

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