Many small communities and towns in Africa suffer from severe problems with water supply and sanitation. Small communities in rural areas and peri-urban areas of small towns have comparable settlement structures in which the reuse of water and the use of sanitation products could be utilized. However, there is only limited local capacity to adopt, implement and operate integrated water supply and sanitation.

CLARA’s overall objective is to strengthen the local capacity in the water supply and sanitation sector. With the aim to provide a demand-oriented water quality, existing low cost technologies for decentralized water supply and sanitation systems shall be assessed and adapted to African conditions with the focus on reducing risks in the use and reuse of water and sanitation products.

Based on these technological improvements and the experiences from the FP6 projects ROSA and NETSSAF, a simplified planning tool for integrated water supply and sanitation systems for small communities and peri-urban areas shall be developed that incorporates the key factors for success. The beginning of the planning process form for example problems and opportunities to reuse the existing technologies, operations or maintenance procedures which are then tailored to the given local capacities. This simplified integrated CLARA planning tool shall then be tested and evaluated in different African regions to incorporate different economic, cultural and social boundary conditions. For the communities participating in the planning process, application documents will be prepared as they serve as the basis to ask for funding for their implementation plans of integrated water supply and sanitation.