ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Discourse on the need to increase access to water in Africa increasingly includes focus on issues of characterizing and maintaining the water quality of improved sources. Monitoring of groundwater quality at a wellhead has the potential to provide critical information both at the time of implementation and over the useful lifetime of a groundwater well. However, there are a series of unique challenges to obtaining high-quality, hightemporal frequency data on water quality in rural regions of Africa. A unique approach to addressing the challenges associated with monitoring groundwater quality in rural regions of Africa was designed and implemented in Bénin, West Africa. Challenges of monitoring in rural Bénin were overcome by establishing water quality monitoring teams within the local communities who were trained to perform, on a weekly basis, basic water quality measurements using test strips and colorimetery. Over a period of three years the teams demonstrated that they could reliably measure water quality parameters on a weekly basis. This was further demonstrated through reliable reproduction of the concentrations of nitrate standards provided in unlabelled (e.g. blind) bottles. As such, this project has demonstrated how the challenges of monitoring water quality in rural Africa can be addressed through involving the local community as critical partners in the process of data collection. The principles behind this project have wide applicability to other rural water quality monitoring situations and offer a new strategy for pursuing water quality monitoring efforts in rural Africa.
