Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grant Awarded to UNESCO-IHE and Partners

UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education and partners were awarded a US$8 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will be used to improve postgraduate sanitation education and for research with a focus on solutions for the urban poor in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. This 5-year capacity building and research project was developed by Prof. Damir Brdjanovic, Professor of Sanitary Engineering at UNESCO-IHE and his team.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced this grant at the AfricaSan conference in Rwanda as part of more than $40 million in new investments launching its Water, Sanitation and Hygiene strategy.

"UNESCO-IHE and our partners: the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand, the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) in Indonesia, the International Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (2iE) in Burkina Faso, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana, Makerere University Institute of Environmental, the Natural Resources (MUIENR) in Uganda, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil and the Universidad del Valle in Colombia, have been working hand in hand with the Gates Foundation in developing the project ideas and shaping it in a way to address the needs of the 2.6 billion people worldwide who do not have access to improved sanitation," Prof. András Szöllösi-Nagy, Rector at UNESCO-IHE explained. More....

A Colombian house showing the impact of lack of sewerage/