Following his nomination and subsequent approval as AMCOW Executive Secretary by African Water Ministers during the last 10th General Assembly of the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Dr. Canisius Kanangire has affirmed his readiness to stimulate the dawn of a new era for the African water and sanitation sector.
Declaring his agenda on Thursday in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire during the training workshop on web-based monitoring and reporting framework for stakeholders and francophone member-states that coincided with his assumption of duties as the head of the continent’s highest decision-making body on water and sanitation, Dr. Kanangire restated his commitment to “strengthening AMCOW’s capacity to provide the needed political leadership and direction for the sector as well as reinforce its fiduciary mechanisms to achieve more accountability, transparency and value for money.”
The new Executive Secretary believes that strengthening AMCOW in its mission of ensuring the effective and efficient management of the continent’s water resources directly translates to the provision of adequate and equitable access to safe water and sanitation for all.
This, according to him, “carries the possibility of making critical contributions to Africa’s progress towards sustainable growth and development and setting us on the on the path to actualising the Africa Water Vision 2025.”
Dr. Kanangire who hails from Rwanda is the immediate past Executive Secretary of Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) Kisumu, Kenya and he brings to AMCOW over two decades of experience in integrated water resources management and transboundary natural resource management. He succeeds Bai Mass Taal, whose tenure ended August 2016.
Established since 2002, the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) seeks to promote cooperation, security, social and economic development and poverty eradication among member states through the effective management of the continent’s water resources. As the Specialised Technical Committee for Water and Sanitation of the African Union, AMCOW contributes to Africa’s progress towards sustainable growth and development by providing political leadership in the continent’s efforts at achieving effective and efficient management of water resources through the provision of adequate and equitable access to safe water and sanitation.
