The Water for African Cities Programme is part of the wider efforts of UN-HABITAT to contribute towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal targets of halving the number of people without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015. This brochure has been prepared in order to highlight some of the successes that the programme has achieved and to share the lessons and challenges encountered thus far in implementing the programme. UN-HABITAT will continue with its efforts to improve the living environment in urban areas through employing such measures so as to improve basic urban services in an environmen-tally friendly manner, and to contribute to the global efforts towards mitigating the effects of climate change.

Secondary urban centres vary widely, both in terms of economic base and water service delivery models. Moreover, what constitutes a Secondary urban centres in one part of the world may be deemed to be something else somewhere else.

To meet the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goals some 300,000 people have to be provided with improved water supplies and 440,000 with improved sanitation every day during the period 2001-2015.

This paper presents an analysis of Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows to the water and sanitation sector, based on data gathered from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and Creditor Reporting Systems (CRS) databases.

Water Operators' Partnerships (WOPs) are peer support relationships between two or more water or sanitation operators, carried out on a not-for-profit basis in the objective of capacity development. This is one of a series of three impact-oriented case studies conducted on WOPs in Asia.

It is intended for water and sanitation service providers, governments, development banks, donors, WOPs facilitators and all who are interested in gaining a better understanding of this solidarity-based approach to helping public operators improve their capacity to sustainably deliver water and sanitation services for all.