Please indicate any innovations in your microfinance program planned for the coming year:
Financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, our new 5-year programme (2019-2024) ‘Making Water Count’ is a joint programme to facilitate and finance innovative and scalable solutions for water and sanitation in Africa and South Asia.
2020 will be the first full year implementation of the Making Water Count programme. In 2019, we adjusted our organisational set-up and internal systems to match with our new strategic framework. At the beginning of 2020 we were ready to start funding, develop (new) partnerships and participate in investment funds for WASH.
Our strategy framework is composed of three levels of required action. The first level stimulates and advances innovation in the water and sanitation sector. The second level focuses on scaling up solutions and enterprises models until they become investment ready. We also worked together with key stakeholders to create an enabling environment for unlocking private capital and get to scale. At the third level, we work towards facilitating innovative and blended finance structures and investments. Aqua for has been developing partnerships with investment funds, impact investors and local financial institutions. This is instrumental to embed water and sanitation in the microfinance landscape.
