Call for better access to clean water

Almost half of Africans have no access to clean running water, an international conference in Addis Ababa heard last week. Some 300 million people on the continent also have no access to sanitation facilities, a conference held by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) was told. It means that millions of people are at risk from serious diseases and infections such as cholera and dysentery. The WSP is an international partnership, administered by the World Bank, which aims to improve water and sanitation facilities around the world. Experts at the conference argued that a massive increase in investment – some 70 percent – was needed to improve water and sanitation supplies. Concern is also mounting that unless urgent action is taken now, by 2020 some 400 million Africans will lack safe drinking water and about 600 million will be without hygienic sanitation. Jamal Saghir, the director of energy and water at the World Bank, told the conference that the key to addressing the problems was through a public and private partnership. “Water and sanitation directly contribute to poverty reduction and growth," he said. "But increasingly, clients and partners are viewing water and sanitation through the prisms of improved health, and a better quality of life.” Saghir also warned that action had to be taken to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015. One of the goals states that by 2015 the number of people without access to safe water should be halved. Ethiopia's Minister of Water, Shiferaw Jarso, told the conference his government had been unable to tap the country's massive water reserves due to financial constraints. In Ethiopia, just 13 percent of the population has access to clean water facilities.