HEGUE – Dr. Eng. Silver Mugisha, the Managing Director of the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), has won the Global Sanitation Graduate School Ambassador Award at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands.
The award presented to NWSC MD by Prof. Damir Brdjanovic recognises Dr. Mugisha’s exceptional dedication and significant contributions to the mission and vision of the Global Sanitation Graduate School (GSGS).
Dr. Mugisha, who is also a member of the Program Advisory Board for the Master of Science Program at IHE Delft, becomes the first African to win this prestigious award.
The IHE Delft Institute for Water Education is the largest international graduate water education facility in the world.
Based in Delft, the Netherlands, IHE Delft confers fully accredited MSc degrees and PhD degrees in collaboration with Dutch partner universities.
Key among others, Dr. Mugisha was awarded for his contribution to the advancement of sanitation education, especially on the African continent, during his four-year leadership as a board member.
Dr. Mugisha has previously been hailed for his dedication, innovation, and relentless pursuit of excellence that has helped to grow NWSC— including paving the way for future generations of sanitation professionals across the African continent and beyond.
During the plenary, one of the sessions, Dr. Mugisha, who was in the company of Eng. Mahmood Lutaaya, the General Manager of Kampala Water, shared the NWSC success story that centers on financial autonomy, reform rationale, and collaborative partnerships.
He also demonstrated foresight and a proactive approach to addressing pressing environmental and financial aspirations.
The corporation aspires to achieve self-sustainability across all its facilities in terms of energy while exploring avenues to generate alternative revenue streams through a “waste to wealth” model, and that is where the Delfland Water Authority team comes in, and to feed the NWSC team’s hunger, they fronted the “Closed-loop closure system.”
He said that NWSC is building the capacity to turn waste into valuable commodities while positioning itself as a global leader in sustainable practices.
This approach, he said, not only fosters business growth through the creation of new profiles and opportunities within the corporation but also strengthens national and international collaborations and diplomatic ties focused on wastewater-affiliated solutions
The MD believes that upscaling its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems from just a monitoring tool to an active operation control system will enhance its operational efficiency and customer service enhancement.
If adopted, Eng. Mugisha indicated that implementing SCADA as a systems control mechanism in Kampala, the benefits could be something to write home about.
SCADA, based on data insights, promises a tighter grip on distribution, enhanced understanding of water demands, prevention of dry zones, and effective control of Non-Revenue water (NRW).
It also facilitates the appreciation of water levels and pressure dynamics, crucial for optimizing resource allocation and infrastructure performance.
The program addresses water and sanitation challenges through education, research, and capacity development at global, national, local, and even microscopic scales – the latter in our laboratories. It focuses on all water-related fields, including social sciences, engineering, and more.
