At the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 26, 2012, the G-8 announced that Burkina Faso, the Côte d’Ivoire, and Mozambique have joined its New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the next phase in reaching their goal of global food security. The New Alliance is a shared commitment to achieve sustainable agricultural growth and bring 50 million people out of poverty within the next 10 years. Its main goals are to mobilize private capital for food security, take innovation to scale, reduce and manage risk, ensure accountability for results, improve nutritional outcomes, and reduce child stunting. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah also announced that 21 additional private sector companies have signed letters of intent to invest an additional $500 million in African agriculture. The G-8 Summit in 2013 will report on the first year of implementing the New Alliance, focusing on collaborations with the private sector and the African Union.

USAID has launched the West Africa Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WAWASH) program, which will be implemented in Ghana, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. The four-year program will build and expand upon the efforts of the West Africa Water Initiative to provide sustainable access to safe water and sanitation and to improve hygiene in West Africa. WAWASH has allocated $24 million to WASH activities, $1 million to food security, and $4 million toward climate change activities. The program hopes to help West Africa reach Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation by supporting new approaches, developing improved WASH service delivery models that are easy to replicate, and incorporating regional priorities into its WASH interventions.

More than 8,500 people in the Nyamasaria community of Kenya will have access to clean and affordable water because of a new partnership between USAID’s Sustainable Water and Sanitation in Africa (SUWASA) program and the Kisumu Water and Sewerage Company (KIWASCO). The technical assistance project, through financing from Kenya’s K-Rep Bank to KIWASCO, provides homes, schools, and health clinics in the Kisumu Province of Kenya with a low-cost, safe, and consistent water supply. Households in the most poverty-stricken communities will be connected to a piped water distribution network. They will then pay a small monthly fee for five years to cover the connection and water supply costs. For about half of the previous monthly fee, participating households will have twice as much access to water.

Biodiversity monitoring by marine scientists in Timor-Leste has revealed several new species of coral in the coastal waters there. Monitoring is part of the Coral Triangle Support Partnership’s efforts to enable communities to better manage their resources and adapt to climate change. Some early findings have indicated that the water temperatures in Timor Leste are lower than in the coastal waters of surrounding countries such as Indonesia and Australia. If this is the case, the marine ecosystems there are likely to be more resilient to climate change impacts and could serve as refuges for marine species in the Coral Triangle that are threatened by rising sea temperatures.