“Roughly 62% of Africans have access to safe water and 60% have access to adequate sanitation, and these are the lowest rates in the world. The lack of access to clean water and improved sanitation presents a huge obstacle to improving basic health conditions, inhibits access to educational services and, obviously, hinders economic growth.
“Poor women and children – those residing in rural and informal urban and peri- urban settlements, are most at risk and are most exposed to preventable water-related diseases. Worldwide, diarrhoea remains one of the main threats to child health and wellbeing in the developing world, each year killing nearly two-million children under five and causing more than five-billion disease episodes,” MCC deputy resident country director for Mozam-bique Evan Freund tells Engineering News.
He adds that there is no single solution to the issue of access to, and the availability of, improved water supply and sanitation. Sound economic and sustainable financing strategies to implement large-scale infrastructure programmes, heath and hygiene education and awareness campaigns, efforts to address and promote best practices in environmental management and good governance all underpin the subject.
“A tremendous amount of work has been done worldwide and in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015. MCC-funded projects in Mozambique, Lesotho and Tanzania – designed, developed and ultimately implemented by these countries – are aimed at improving bulk water storage capacity and urban service delivery, rural access, agricultural potential and health-related benefits,” he says.
MCC works with some of the poorest countries in the world, and will be hosting a water event at the US Commercial Services, in Johannesburg, in October, to further deal with water issues.
For a country to be selected for an MCC assistance programme, it must demonstrate a commitment to policies that promote political and economic freedom, investments in education and health, control of corruption, and respect for civil liberties and the rule of law as measured by 17 policy indicators.
MCC provides access to clean and reliable water along with MCC partner countries that also recognise the significance of water infrastructure to the sustainability of their initiatives to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth. It has invested about $530-million in water and sanitation projects and more than $400-million in irrigation to support the agriculture sector.
MCC awarded a five-year $203,6-million grant to the government of Mozambique for investment in water supply and sanitation for northern Mozambique as part of a larger $504-million compact.
MCC has also awarded Tanzania $66,3-million for water supply projects in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro as part of a larger $698,1-million compact. The Dar es Salaam subprojects involve water supply services, including the expansion of the Lower Ruvu water treatment plant and the reduction of nonrevenue water through physical, social and commercial operating improvements to this urban water system. The grant will also be used to improve water supply in Morogoro and to help the Morogoro Water and Sewerage Authority achieve financial sustainability.
Lesotho received a five-year $164-million grant for water supplies and sanitation facilities for rural and urban domestic, commercial and industrial users.
The Lesotho government will use the grant to construct a conveyance system from the Metolong dam and establish a project management unit to manage the dam, the water treatment plant and the conveyance system. It will also be used to rehabilitate and expand reticulated networks in eight towns, and provide additional access to improved water supply and sanitation facilities in rural areas through the rehabilitation and construction of up to 250 water supply points and up to 10 000 ventilated improved pit latrines.