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Infrastructure and basic services have a crucial role to play in alleviating urban poverty, especially in Africa. A lack of or inadequate access to water, sanitation and energy denies individual rights to dignity and health. It also has major repercussions on education, gender equality, nutrition and income-earning capacity. With 72 per cent – or 187 million people – of its urban population living in slums, infrastructure and basic services are a major challenge for Africa.
This is a daunting task for African cities given that only 48 per cent of urban households in sub-Saharan Africa have a water connection. That proportion shrinks to 19 per cent in informal settlements. For sewerage systems, the respective figures are 31 per cent and 7 per cent, and for electricity, 54 per cent and 20 percent. And while just an overall 15.5 per cent have a telephone, only 3 per cent enjoy this luxury in the slums.
As part of its strategy to reduce urban poverty, UN-HABITAT launched its Water for African Cities programme in 1999. The scheme, the first of its kind, currently operates in seven major sub-Saharan municipalities: Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lusaka and Nairobi. It helps the municipalities develop and implement comprehensive strategies that integrate water and environmental management with urban development. The scheme is a direct response to the 1997 Cape Town Ministerial Resolution on the continent’s urban water challenge.
In its first phase the Programme has already provided excellent value for relatively modest investments. During a press conference at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, United States Senator Timothy E. Wirth noted that of the $400 million worth of schemes supported by the United Nations Foundation, of which he is president, none had proved more cost-effective than UN-HABITAT’s Water for African Cities programme.
The scheme exemplifies the ability of UN-HABITAT programmes to act as catalysts for financial and other resources. Modest donor support has gone a long way indeed. The first phase of the scheme has leveraged funds within countries and demonstrated the potential to change the attitudes of senior decision-makers. This in turn strengthens municipal management capacities and as a result pilot projects have already delivered significant, tangible results.
The programme is now firmly on the list of African water priorities. It has also been singled out by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) for further support. In December 2002, the UN General Assembly called upon UN-HABITAT to give continuing support to the programme. Following the launch of the second phase at the Pan-African Implementation and Partnership Conference on Water held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in December 2003, African Ministers appealed to other development partners to support the programme.
Five years since its inception, UN-HABITAT’s Water for African Cities programme has had a significant impact. There is now a recognition that water demand management represents the most cost-effective way of increasing supply of this relatively scarce resource. Curbing leaks and waste now is well accepted practice both at the policy level and among water utilisers, so much so that the scheme is having a ripple effect beyond those cities participating. In Zambia, water regulators said that they will adopt the demand management strategy developed for the capital, Lusaka, as a model for a nation-wide scheme.
In Ghana, thanks to the agency in charge of restructuring the water sector, demand management is becoming part and parcel of both the regulatory framework and national water policy. Indeed, Ghana too has come to realise the benefits of water management. These include lower consumption of scarce resources on the demand side, matched by welcome increases in earnings on the supply side. The two together enable water utilities and governments to focus on really useful investments that will benefit the poor.
In the capital, Accra, the Leak Detection Project of the University of Ghana has led to a reduction in losses of 300m3/day. But as more water goes through the meters, there has been a fivefold increase in the charges collected by the Ghana Water Company since the project came on stream.
The benefits of water demand management as sponsored by the UN-HABITAT programme are just as tangible in other African cities. In Johannesburg, the scheme saved so much water that plans to build an additional reservoir were scrapped. In Addis Ababa, despite a growing population and drought, curbing leaks and waste has resulted in annual savings of US$1.6 million for the government.
The other major accomplishment of the scheme has been the creation of a unique network of city managers. As they assess achievements together and share ideas and experiences, they further magnify the benefits of the UN-HABITAT’s Water for African Cities programme.
Pireh Otieno is a Project Officer with UN-HABITAT’s Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch
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