34^th WEDC International Conference

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Sustainable Development and Multisectoral Approaches
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – 18-22 May 2009

WEDC Conference blog: There is now a blog for the WEDC Conference! Available at http://wedcconf.wordpress.com, this virtual notice board aims to support the more informal side of networking, giving you the opportunity to flag up your interests in advance of the conference, perhaps if you'd like to meet up with others who share them. The blog is moderated so that messages unrelated to the conference or those of a commercial nature will not be included. Other than that, it's your blog, so please use it!

Side events – all sold out!

To find out more about the history of the WEDC Conference, click here for a recent article in the MEA Bulletin.

Excellent response to the Call for Papers! There has been an excellent response to the 34th WEDC International Conference Call for Papers, with more than 250 international submissions now in the system. The deadline for receipt of these has now passed. Papers which have been submitted in the correct template on or before this date are being reviewed and comments will be sent to authors shortly.

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The Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), based at Loughborough University, is one of the world's leading education, training, research and consultancy institutes concerned with improving access to infrastructure services for people in low- and middle-income countries.

The WEDC International Conference is a highly respected, global platform for practitioners, decision makers, academics and researchers who lead water and sanitation innovation in developing countries. Click here to view some photos of the 2008 conference.

By invitation of the Ethiopian Ministry of Water Resources, this 34th WEDC conference will take place in Addis Ababa and will showcase experience from around the world.

Each year, the WEDC International Conference is held in either Africa or Asia and is the only conference of its type to be co-organized and hosted in a developing country. This unique collaboration attracts wide local participation from the host country, this providing and invaluable opportunity for attendance at an international event, which would otherwise not be possible.

Over the last ten years, on average, the conference has been attended by over 400 delegates from over 78 countries. A majority of the delegates are from developing countries (more than 90%) – a statistic unique to this conference.

In addition, unlike other conferences, a vast majority of the delegates are practitioners and decision makers.

The WEDC International Conference was last held in Addis Ababa in 1999. It hosted over 450 delegates, an impressive 60% of whom were from Ethiopia. In total, 31 countries were represented, ranging from Australia and Bangladesh to USA, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The conference lasts five days, with a number of parallel sessions of formal presentations on different subjects. One day is reserved for field trips to local sites of interest. Time is also allocated for more informal discussion groups and workshops. The Local Organizing Committee usually arrange a conference dinner which sometimes includes a cultural programme.

A Call for Papers is circulated about a year ahead. There are different types of paper submissions, all of which are reviewed. All papers must be submitted in the conference template. Printed and bound copies of the Pre-prints are issued on registration. The Conference Proceedings – which include all papers presented, keynote speeches and summaries from the themed discussions which take place on each topic – are published on CD-Rom and mailed to all delegates.