Guidelines for community-led multiple use water services: evidence from rural South Africa

The African Water Facility, together with the Water Research Commission, South Africa, as its implementing agent, supported the demonstration project Operationalizing community-led Multiple Use water Services (MUS) in South Africa. As knowledge broker and research partner in this project, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) analyzed processes and impacts at the local level, where the nongovernmental organization Tsogang Water and Sanitation demonstrated community-led MUS in six diverse rural communities in two of the poorest districts of South Africa, Sekhukhune and Vhembe districts - Ga Mokgotho, Ga Moela and Phiring in the Sekhukhune District Municipality, and Tshakhuma, Khalavha and Ha Gumbu in Vhembe District Municipality. In conventional water infrastructure projects, external state or non-state agencies plan, diagnose, design and prioritize solutions, mobilize funding, and implement the procurement of materials, recruitment of workers and construction. However, this MUS project facilitated decision-making by communities, and provided technical and institutional advice and capacity development. Based on IWMI’s evidence, tools and manuals, the project team organized learning alliances and policy dialogues from municipal to national level on the replication of community-led MUS by water services authorities; government departments of water, agriculture, and others; employment generation programs; climate and disaster management; and corporate social responsibility initiatives. This working paper synthesizes the lessons learned about the six steps of the community-led MUS process in all six communities. The step-wise process appeared to be welcome and effective across the board. The duration of the process and the costs of facilitation, technical and institutional capacity development, and engineering advice and quality control were comparable to conventional approaches. However, the respective responsibilities of the government and communities, also in longer-term co-management arrangements, depended on the type of infrastructure. Some communities were supported to improve their communal self supply systems. In other communities, the process enabled an extension of the reticulation of borehole systems owned, operated and maintained by municipalities. Almost all households used water supplies at homesteads for multiple purposes, underscoring synergies in cross-sectoral collaboration between the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and irrigation sectors

Process and benefits of community-led multiple use water services: comparing two communities in South Africa

The African Water Facility, together with the Water Research Commission, South Africa, as its implementing agent, supported the demonstration project Operationalizing community-led Multiple Use water Services (MUS) in South Africa. As knowledge broker and research partner in this project, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) analyzed processes and impacts at the local level, where the nongovernmental organization Tsogang Water and Sanitation demonstrated community-led MUS in six diverse rural communities in two of the poorest districts of South Africa, Sekhukhune and Vhembe districts - Ga Mokgotho, Ga Moela and Phiring in the Sekhukhune District Municipality, and Tshakhuma, Khalavha and Ha Gumbu in Vhembe District Municipality. In conventional water infrastructure projects, external state and non-state agencies plan, diagnose, design and prioritize solutions, mobilize funding, and implement the procurement of materials, recruitment of workers and construction. However, this MUS project facilitated decision-making by communities, and provided technical and institutional advice and capacity development. Based on IWMI’s evidence, tools and manuals, the project team organized learning alliances and policy dialogues from municipal to national level on the replication of community-led MUS by water services authorities; government departments of water, agriculture, and others; employment generation programs; climate and disaster management; and corporate social responsibility initiatives. This working paper reports on the local findings of Ga Mokgotho and Ga Moela villages, which had completed construction works. The paper presents an in-depth analysis from the preproject situation to each of the steps of the participatory process, and highlights the resulting benefits of more water, more reliable and sustainable supplies, and multiple benefits, including a 60% and 76% increase in the value of irrigated produce in Ga Mokgotho and Ga Moela, respectively. Women were the sole irrigation manager in 68% and 60% of the households in Ga Mokgotho and Ga Moela, respectively. The user satisfaction survey highlighted communities’ unanimous preference of the participatory process, capacity development and ownership compared to conventional approaches

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Structural characterization of mechanically milled and annealed tungsten powder

Abstract Nanocrystalline W powders with an average crystallite size of about 50 nm were produced by mechanical milling. BCT phase was mechanically induced as a result of BCC lattice deformation (compression) along [110], upon 10 h, 20 h and 30 h milling corresponding to a magnetic saturation of 1.3, 6.9, and 9.8 μTm3/kg. This BCT phase suggests the tetragonal deformation path to be responsible for the observed anomalous magnetism in W. Following DSC–TG thermal analysis, a magnetic saturation of 68 μTm3/kg was obtained upon annealing the 30 h milled W powder at 1200 °C. In addition, two BCT phases with c/a=1.313 (a=0.29066, c=0.38170 nm) and 0.907 (a=0.32602, c=0.29575 nm) were detected

Characterization of titanium powders processed in n-hexane by high-energy ball milling

The effect of speed and milling time on the morphology, crystallite size, and phase composition of Ti Cp powders processed in n-hexane by high-energy ball milling (HEBM) using a E-max Retsch equipment was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Lattice parameters, mean crystallite size, lattice strain, and dislocation density were obtained from Rietveld analysis. The XRD and TEM results show that the HEBM process of the Ti Cp promotes the transition from HCP to FCC after 6 h of milling at 1400 rpm. The transformation process could be attributed to the energy generated in the milling process which induces high deformation and presence of high-density dislocations in the powder. Graphical Abstract[Figure not available: see fulltext.]. © 2020, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature