Sunday 22 November 2009

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Opening the tap of private capital

Katrina Manson looks at the mixed record of international companies in projects to improve water supply for some of the world’s poorest countries

When I was young, my father once asked if I would like a world in which it was always sunny and never rained. Loving sunshine but somehow sensing a trap, I opted for ‘no’ and blurted the first reason I could grasp – because then the flowers would never grow. He seized on his victory: ‘There you go,’ he triumphed to a confused eight-year-old who hadn’t realised party colours were on the weather agenda. ‘You’re a Conservative; a socialist wouldn’t think about such practicalities.’ Water and politics make for just as unfathomable a pairing today.

The situation is dire. More than a billion people don’t have access to the stuff of life, 314 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly two million children a year die because of dirty water. It’s costing the continent money too – 5 per cent of Africa’s GDP is lost due to water-associated death and disease. In total, Africans south of the Sahara spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water – equivalent to the annual hours worked by the entire French labour force.

With all that in mind, some Western firms sense a good chance to make a buck. French companies Suez Environnement and Veolia, the two giants of the industry – with two-thirds of the market to their name – generate revenues of up to a billion euros each in Africa.

But the thirsty aren’t always in much of a position to shell out: 800 million of them live on less than $2 a day, while the left decries making money from water as an outrage against human rights. Placards emblazoned with ‘No profits from water’ dance in demonstrators’ hands; cholera outbreaks resulting from disconnections for non-payment in South Africa provide scenarios of nasty capitalism for radical cartoonists; protestors against rate hikes following privatisation in Bolivia in 2000 met tear gas, imprisonment, and in several cases, death.

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