Opening the tap of private capital

Katrina Manson

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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