Funding agreed for Dar es Salaam water project

The African Development Bank (ADB) has signed an agreement with the Tanzanian government to provide a loan of over US $46.8 million and a grant of over $1.6 million to finance a water supply and sanitation scheme for the commercial capital and largest city, Dar es Salaam. The five-year project, approved by the ADB board of directors in December, is intended to "help alleviate the critical problem of water shortage in Dar es Salaam by promoting private-sector participation", according to a press release from the bank. The rehabilitation of the water supply and sanitation system was a poverty reduction measure intended to "improve the economic and social wellbeing of the people... by providing them with better access to clean water, thereby reducing the incidence of waterborne diseases among vulnerable groups", it added. Rapid urbanisation in East Africa has not been accompanied by a rise in economic development, and there has been an overall decline in the quality and quantity of service provision, according to the UN Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) in Nairobi, Kenya. Urban growth in Dar es Salaam, as in other large cities, has come to be associated with unemployment, low life expectancy, poor nutrition status and low levels of education. Low-income households, which constitute more than 70 percent of urban households in east Africa, have no adequate access to clean running water, adequate shelter, garbage collection, sanitation and so on, and are therefore exposed to all kinds of disease. Settlements in Dar es Salaam have been characterised by lack of basic community infrastructure services, including water supply, sewerage, access roads, drainage and solid-waste management, according to a paper presented by the Tanzanian government at the UN General Assembly’s "Istanbul plus 5" special session on human shelter in June 2001. Between 40 and 70 percent of the urban residents currently live in informal settlements (many of them slums), it said. Less than 10 percent of the urban population is connected to a sewerage system, and another 10 percent (mostly in the middle and upper income group) use septic tanks, leaving the rest of the population dependent on pit latrines, according to the World Bank's soft lending arm, the International Development Association (IDA), which is also funding the Dar es Salaam project. "Pit emptying services are often inadequate, and most latrine users resort to manual emptying with heavy associated health risks. Cholera outbreaks are common," according to the IDA. The Dar es Salaam project, then, is intended to improve the accessibility, quality, reliability and affordability of water supply and sanitation services in order to improve public health and wellbeing in a city prone to cholera and outbreaks of waterborne diseases. The project is also intended to strengthen the institutions tasked with supplying water and sanitation services in the city, notably the Dar es Salaam Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, and to support the activities of Tanzania's main economic centre by helping establish a reliable, sustainable and affordable water and sanitation service.