On 20 July 2011, ANEW regional network elected a new Board of Directors to oversee the affairs of ANEW for the next two years. Leo Atakpu, ANEW's elected Chairman, writes a message of his vision and priorities to members.  

A mission to strengthen ANEW

I bring you warm greetings. As you all may be aware, history was made in Kigali on July 20, 2011 as a new Board of Directors was elected to oversee the affairs of ANEW for the next two years.

The AGM was appropriately used to put behind us some of the issues and challenges experienced in the past few months following the end of the three years European Union supported project which closed in October last year.

It is therefore significant to remark that we came out stronger as a continent wide network of Civil Society Organizations working on issues of water and sanitation in Kigali.

As a new board, the task ahead of us is daunting. But the men and women elected have chosen to be forward looking. We recognize that there are challenges but we are committed to bracing up to them.

Permit me to share with you some major areas that we will be focusing in the next two years:

Development of the secretariat

Top on our priority is fund raising. This is urgent as we need to strengthen our secretariat to be able to deliver on its statutory mandate. We need to hire more hands and regularize the existing two as the case may be.

We equally need to establish an independent secretariat for ANEW and commence a programme of transition from Maj Ufanisi our excellent host all these years. We need to set up systems to guarantee openness, probity and accountability in our operations.

Strengthening of national networks

As promised during the AGM, our focus would also be to strengthen the operations of our national networks, more so, when the constitutional amendment now positions ANEW as 'network of networks' following the abolition of organizational membership by the General Assembly.

In this wise, we are looking forward to working closely with existing 24 country networks and open up new ones in countries where national networks are yet to be established.

Visibility and policy engagement

In the days and months to come, we look forward to improving on the visibility of ANEW in the
continent and globally through research and documentation, capacity building, other educational activities, and campaigns. We would deepen our engagement with Africa Ministerial Conference on Water (AMCOW) and will encourage national networks to work closely with governments at national and local levels with an aim of meeting the Water and Sanitation MDGs and realization of e-EThekwini declaration on Sanitation MDG. We would work with AMCOW secretariat to operationalise the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between AMCOW and ANEW enunciated by our predecessors.

We would pursue actions and activities that would promote strategic partnerships and alliances with Pan Africa, regional, national and bilateral organizations. We would aggressively work to promote the right to water and sanitation, institutional building, as well as monitoring of mechanisms that have been put in place by our governments aimed at realizing the MDGs on WASH.

We would, in like manner, work closely with WSSCC, Africa Union and Sub-regional bodies such as ECOWAS, SADEC, and others. We would strengthen our partnership with the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) and other multi-lateral institutions with the aim of advancing our goals and objectives.

Our partners

We would foster and deepen our collaboration and partnerships with Fresh Action Water Network (FAN), WaterAid, UN, other regional Civil Society Water and Sanitation networks. We like to use this opportunity to appeal to them for continued collaboration and support.

Members' support

We can not realize all we have set out to achieve without the continued support of the generality of our members. We appreciate the abundance of human capital with profound knowledge and experience on the issues we work on. We would from time to time rely on your wealth of experiences for support, advice, suggestions, and actions.

It is equally important to recall that at the AGM, we agreed to fix an annual due payable by member networks. At the appropriate time, the secretariat would communicate the modalities on how to proceed with this decision.

In the same spirit, we would continue to welcome volunteerism from our members in all areas of our work. This has been very helpful, particularly during our challenging times leading up to the AGM.

Appreciation

On behalf of the new Board of Directors, I will like to appreciate our immediate past Chairman, Prof. Edward Kairu for his invaluable contributions towards the establishment of ANEW that we are all proud of today. We also note with a heart of gratitude the contributions of all other previous members of Board of Directors as well as past Executive Secretary and staff for their various contributions towards the building and development of ANEW.

Our appreciation also goes to the Acting Executive Secretary, Mr Yiga Baker Matovu and his Finance colleague Paul Oyugi, for their commitment, energy and sacrifice in steering the sheep of ANEW through the challenging period till date. We thank all delegates to the 2011 AGM who elected us and we want to re-assure you of our commitment to take ANEW to the next level as we look forward to better days and years ahead.

I thank you all.

Leo Atakpu
Chairman, ANEW Board of Directors