Somalia - IOM Somalia, together with Poly-Glu Social Business from Osaka, Japan, yesterday (25/08) held a public-private partnership event entitled: Saving Lives through Poly-Glu Water: A Seminar to Share Lessons Learned from Africa and Asia.

During the half day seminar, IOM, Poly-Glu Social Business and their partners from Japan, Somalia, Tanzania and Bangladesh met in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to present a Japanese technology made from traditional food that is used to clean dirty water, potentially saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

The event was organized against the backdrop of the Sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI), which will take place 27-28 August 2016.

IOM presented lessons learned from its unique tripartite public-private partnerships (PPP) with Poly-Glu Social Business and the Government of Japan, which has been implemented in Somalia since 2012. It also made practical recommendations on how to develop such partnerships.

IOM is currently implementing a Japanese-funded water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme in Somalia, providing safe water daily to over 120,000 migrants and host communities through 44 water facilities throughout the country. Since 2012, IOM has also raised the awareness of 400,000 people of WASH issues, trained 122 community members to maintain water facilities, and constructed over 120 sanitation facilities.

Besides Poly-Glu Social Business, IOM has been partnering with different Japanese companies in Somalia, including Panasonic, Yamaha Motors and Sumitomo Chemicals. IOM works with these companies in order to improve income generation opportunities, mitigate gender-based violence among internally displaced persons and prevent vector borne diseases, in particular malaria.

For further information, please contact Dr. Omar Khayre at IOM Somalia, Tel: Phone: +254 708 985 812, Email: okhayre@iom.int