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Tanzanian activists call for non-payment of World Bank water debt

Campaigners in Tanzania have called on their government not to repay $61.5 million to the World Bank on loans for a water project which yielded ‘no positive results’.



The Dar es Salaam water supply and sanitation project, which lasted from 2003 to 2010, also included loans of $48 million from the African Development Bank and $34 million from the European Investment Bank. The loans are due to begin being repaid later this year.

A condition of the loans, as well as debt relief for Tanzania, was the privatisation of Dar es Salaam's water. City Water, a consortium which included Biwater from the UK and HP Gauff Inegnieure GmbH from Germany, began operating Dar es Salaam’s water in 2003.  However, as the World Bank says, City Water “was unable to meet many of its targets and obligations from the start”. One of the reasons was because shareholders failed to invest promised equity. In May 2005, fearing that City Water was about to collapse, the Dar es Salaam water authority terminated their contract, and on 1 June the company’s three British managers were deported.

In 2007, a UN arbitration ruled that...

Celebrate World Water Day by being part of something big

Today is the twentieth World Water Day. But for over a billion people who still lack access to sufficient safe clean drinking water, there’s little to celebrate.

Women protesting for their right to water

WDM's campaigning against water privatisation in the 2000s saw a number of successes, ultimately ensuring that UK aid money supported pro-poor public water utilities rather than privatisation and higher prices. Since then, there have also been victories closer to home, with Italian voters rejecting water privatisation in 2011.

But there’s still a long way to go. In the pan-European region alone, more than 110 million people, representing 12 per cent of the population, still lack access to drinking water.

This year sees an important opportunity. Across Europe, civil society groups and unions are joining forces as part of a ‘European Citizen’s Initiative’, a type of EU-wide petition, calling for the European commission to formally recognise water and sanitation as human rights, to stop pushing for the privatisation of water...

Down the drain: How aid for water sector reform could be better spent

 

Water campaign

WDM campaigned on the issue of water privatisation in poor countries between 2005 and 2008.

Child next to a water tap

Water is a gift from Earth. We need to take care of it and preserve it so the next generation can live. If we don’t, the cost is the people, it is us

Oscar Olivera, water activist, Bolivia, 2006.

Background

Most of us take clean water for granted, but a sixth of the world’s population aren’t so lucky. Over a billion people worldwide cannot reach or afford clean water.

Nearly two million children die every year because they do not have regular, safe water to drink, while the lives of many more people are blighted by the illness and preventable diseases that result from unsafe water and poor sanitation.

WDM lobbied for the UK government to adopt policies that promote access to clean drinking water, rather than waste aid money on failed privatisation. WDM campaigned to limit the spread of coporate control over water resources, and against climate change that threatens water supplies worldwide.

Water campaign successes  

 
  • In 2009,...

Going public: Southern solutions to the global water crisis

There is almost certainly consensus on the importance of tackling the global water crisis in order to achieve the MDGs. There is almost certainly consensus that the public sector has not succeeded in improving water and sanitation in many parts of the world. There is almost certainly consensus on the need for major investments in water and sanitation if the situation is to be changed. And there is almost certainly consensus on the need for donor govern- ments to give water and sanitation a high priority.

However, over the past decade, a debate has raged over how to tackle the global water crisis, and in particular, what the role is for the public sector and what the role is for the private sector. During this time, large expect- ations have been placed on the ability of the private sector to deliver clean water to the poor, and significant aid has been used to support the private sector in this endeavour - with little to show for it.

The evidence is clear that the MDGs cannot be met without major public investment, alongside the improvement and expansion of existing public providers, cooperating with any other existing domestic providers. The key questions now are: how can we improve and expand public providers? Who has the experience to help with this? And how...



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