This multi-stakeholder statement emerging from the deliberations during the Fifth Africa Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene held in Cape Town, South Africa, February 18-22, 2019, focuses on progress towards achieving the Vision and Commitments of the Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene in Africa.

It sets out the key issues of the sanitation and hygiene sector in Africa (see below) and the specific actions to be taken by each stakeholder group including Local Administrative Authorities, Development Partners, Civil Society, and Private Sector.

Key issues:
1. “Leaving No One Behind”: to ensure universal, safely managed sanitation and hygiene and eliminate open defecation, we need to better identify and target the most vulnerable groups with strategies and interventions, including product and service innovations.
2. National institutional reforms that clarify roles and mandates with respect to sanitation and hygiene regulation, enforcement and service provision underpin the enabling environment necessary to achieve the Ngor commitments. The strengthened enabling environment will provide the opportunity for impact-driven public private partnership engagement and investment.
3. Evidence from the progress analysis that highlights the need to accelerate and mobilize new and innovative investments in sanitation and hygiene to close the financing gap.
4. Progress towards the Ngor commitment to develop and fund strategies to bridge the sanitation and hygiene human resources gap at all levels is a key challenge across many countries.
5. The Ngor monitoring baseline has shown progress in government-led monitoring and review systems. Countries must make further efforts to define and strengthen their specific and measurable targets, indicators and systems to track and measure annual performance across all of their vision, commitments and policy objectives.
6. Eliminating untreated waste, and encouraging its productive re-use is essential for safely managed sanitation targets. As a first step African countries need to establish a national baseline, develop a tracking mechanism and set ambitious targets to address this urgent issue.