Although made in advance of the SDGs, the vision of the Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene closely aligns with the SDG sanitation and hygiene targets. Therefore, for the purposes of the baseline monitoring report, SDG monitoring data is used to report vision level indicators. The findings indicate that progress is off-track in West Africa: • Less than 20% of the region’s rural population and just less than 40% of the urban population have access to at least basic sanitation. • Open defecation is a predominantly rural issue in West Africa, 42% of the rural population practice open defecation. This average figure masks several countries with considerably higher rates of OD (range 2%-85%) • Hygiene practice is also low – only 8% rural and 20% urban households in the region have basic handwashing with soap facilities.