A delegation from the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and Africa Environmental Sanitation Consult (AFESC), the research and consultancy firm of Jospong Group of Companies and Sanitation giants, Zoomlion, are in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to understudy that country’s waste management system and good environmental and sanitation practices.

The visit will enable the delegation to learn at first hand how those practices could be adopted for implementation by the AMA to make Accra and Ghana the cleanest city and country in Africa in the foreseeable future.

The delegation included some environmental and sanitation experts from AMA and AFESC and some selected journalists.

The Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Mohammed Adjei Sowah, and the Managing Director (MD) of AFESC, Dr Abena Asomaning Antwi, are co-leaders of the delegation.

Others are the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of Korle Klottey, Nii Adjei Tawiah; Dr Kofi Sekyere Boateng, an Environmental and Public Health consultant; Dr Yahaya Yakubu, an Environmental Analyst; Ms Jemima Lomotey, the Greater Accra Regional Economic Planning Officer, who is representing the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council (RCC), and Mr Victor Kotey, Deputy Director, Waste Management Department, AMA.

Rationale for visit

At a briefing session to kick start the visit in Kigali last Monday, Mr Sowah explained that “we are here to learn about their waste management system and the good sanitation practices that we can replicate to make Accra and Ghana clean as we further collaborate to establish a sister city relations with Kigali”.

He expressed the hope that at the end of the visit “we would have learnt something that the city of Kigali is doing to establish their status as the cleanest city in Africa”.

For her part, Dr Antwi said the visit was significant since it would give them an insight into the initiatives and innovations that had been adopted by their host in the environmental sanitation sector.

Site

Among the sites the delegation has so far visited is the genocide memorial,  the final resting place of over 250,000 victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Source: Graphic