Africa

KENYA: Investments in water and sanitation can give surprisingly powerful results. Take Kibera as an example: When UN-Habitat started building clean water and sanitation stations and facilitated the connections with the Kenyan water authorities, this Nairobi slum suddenly started organising itself around those facilities. Businesses started growing around toilets, roads were built to cover and protect water connections, while shack-dwellers become stakeholders. Scaling up such project has its challenges, what are they? And does organising water networks in such manner lead to organising informal human settlements such as slums? What are the lessons to be learned or avoided?

It has been called the silent killer, and poor sanitation and bad water is the cause. Diarrhoea kills more young children each year than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Moreover, it causes malnutrition, dehydration and numerous school and work days lost. While access to clean water and basic sanitation increases globally, Sub-Saharan Africa is still lagging behind. How can we speed up the process?

The global economy has doubled over the last couple of decades, at the cost of exploiting 60per cent of the world’s ecosystems in an unsustainable manner. This has spurred a search for a "green economy" - an economic regime which would ensure improved human well-being and social equity, while at the same time reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. Here, the water sector offers endless opportunities. In Africa alone, estimates are that investments in small scale projects that would provide access to safe water and basic sanitation could return gains of $28.4 billion a year, which is around five per cent of GDP. In fact, Africa already seems to be on the road to greening their economy. African leaders are increasingly realising the continent’s potential: from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar to the extraordinary economic importance of Africa’s nature-based assets such as its forests, river systems and coastal waters. Find out more during the African focus day.

MALI, UGANDA - Corruption is an issue that too many tend to shy away from. Unfortunately, the complex nature of the water sector makes it an ideal ground for corruption to fester on and the poor are particularly prone to fall victim to it. Two brave countries have dared to bring the problem to the surface. In Uganda, the Ministry of Water and Environment and international actors came together to develop comprehensive water integrity programme to address risks and challenges. Meanwhile, Mali got hands on with the problem by implementing an Integrity Pact that supports contracts between bidders and the authority in a procurement process, committing all participants to transparency and integrity throughout. What can Uganda and Mali tell about their experiences, and how can others follow?

SUDAN: Lack of access to water continues to be one of the major drivers of conflict in Darfur, particularly along nomadic migratory routes. Historically, conflicts over the limited water resources were mediated by traditional social institutions such as the Native Administration, which took climatic variation and group mobility into account, during conflict mediation and deliberations. This mechanism has been weakened over the years. Changes in environmental conditions combined with the weakening of the traditional conflict-resolution mechanisms and marginalisation of the Darfurian population exacerbated the water-related conflict within the context of a greater regional conflict and civil war. How to strengthen the social, political and administrative mechanisms available for facilitating access to water and sanitation? How can water quell further conflict?