Emmanuel Opoku awarded COVID-19 African Innovation Seed Fund grant
Emmanuel Opoku, a masters student at the School of Geography and the Environment, has been awarded a £1,000 grant from the Vice Chancellor's COVID-19 African Innovation Seed Fund for entrepreneurial projects aimed at addressing global challenges stemming from the pandemic.
The grant was one of five awarded in partnership with the Oxford University Africa Society, during the 2021 Oxford Africa Conference. Held virtually this year, the Conference was introduced by Dr Tedros Adhanom, Director General of the WHO, and it highlighted innovations and progress in health, economics, climate and politics in Africa.
Improving Water Pricing Strategies Amidst Ghana's COVID-19 Free Water Policy
Emmanuel is studying on the MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management at Linacre College. His innovation aims to ensure that the most vulnerable households in Ghana have access to safe drinking water amidst the pandemic.
Emmanuel aims to devise a strategy to subsidise water prices for the most vulnerable water users, by assessing their water affordability. Household water affordability is determined by finding the ratio of household's expenses on water to their total expenditure/income. Based on the 2018 UN's economic growth report, households whose water affordability is below 10% are considered vulnerable.
Emmanuel has developed an innovative approach, calculating water affordability in 100 households over a 10-day period. From his analysis, households whose water affordability is below the 10% threshold will be marked as vulnerable. This will allow the Government to target vulnerable areas and provide proportionate subsidies on tariffs.
His innovation has the potential to create long-lasting improvements in water-pricing techniques in Ghana. The support from the Vice Chancellor's COVID-19 African Innovation Seed Fund will cover the travel and research costs.
"The Increasing Block Tariff water pricing strategy has been widely adopted by utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it imposes differential affordability burden on low-income households and hinders utilities from fully recovering costs. This is a good opportunity for not only determining befitting subsidy beneficiaries but for developing cost reflective tariffs designs that could be adopted globally." - Emmanuel Opoku
For more information on the COVID-19 African Innovation Seed Fund and the other grant recipients visit the Africa Oxford Initiative.
Emmanuel Opoku awarded COVID-19 African Innovation Seed Fund grant
Emmanuel Opoku, a masters student at the School of Geography and the Environment, has been awarded a £1,000 grant from the Vice Chancellor's COVID-19 African Innovation Seed Fund for entrepreneurial projects aimed at addressing global challenges stemming from the pandemic.
