Securing a reliable supply of life’s most precious commodity – water – has long been challenging across large parts of the African continent.
But the situation will almost certainly worsen in the years to come as droughts become increasingly frequent and severe. Crises in other parts of the world provide a warning for Africa. In Iran, for example, officials have warned they may have to evacuate Tehran, owing to a critical shortage of water caused by the failure of seasonal rains.
Cape Town famously had a similar experience in 2018, narrowly averting a much-feared ‘Day Zero’ when the taps would run dry. Meanwhile, swathes of eastern and southern Africa have recently faced extended dry spells that brought devastating consequences for food production.
Unsurprisingly, at the World Water Congress, held in the Moroccan city of Marrakech earlier this month, the need for Africa and other parts of the Global South to work quickly to strengthen water infrastructure in the face of climate change was high up he agenda.
“The world is not on track to achieve universal access to safely managed water and sanitation, or to secure the long-term sustainability of our water resources,” said Retno Marsdui, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on water, at the Congress. She warned of a “grim picture”, referring to data showing 4.8bn people face risks to their health and livelihoods due to poor water quality by 2030.
Non-conventional approaches
Marrakech was a fitting venue for the World Water Congress, given the region’s long history of innovation in making use of scarce supplies of water.
Thousands of years ago, farmers built underground tunnels known as khettaras in the foothills of the nearby Atlas Mountains, helping to direct water towards the farms and settlements on the plains downstream.
Innovation continues up to the present day. Indeed, many of the delegates at the Congress might not have realised that the lush greenery of the golf courses around the conference venue – a key draw for tourists – is made possible by recycled water.
Moroccan parastatal company SRM-MS has been operating a $1.5bn wastewater treatment facility in Marrakech since 2011. As well as watering golf courses, its treated wastewater irrigates green spaces, gardens and palm groves and is used in the phosphate production facilities of Moroccan mining giant OCP.
SRM-MS has “very unique experience”, says the company’s head of communications, Amine Berrada, pointing to its primary, secondary and tertiary treatments. These steps remove solids from wastewater, dissolve organic matter and then thoroughly disinfect water.
Indeed, few cities around the world make use of treated wastewater on the scale of Marrakech. Its investments are made possible not only through the availability of government funding, but also the ability of water users such as hotel chains to contribute to the financing of wastewater treatment.
Across most of sub-Saharan Africa, the ability to invest huge sums in ‘non-conventional’ water resources is much more constrained – and, in fact, the constraints may be getting tighter, owing to the reduction of donor funding.
“We’re in a period of disruption, says Rachel Cardone, director of strategy and investment at the non-profit Resilient Water Accelerator. She points out that almost all countries subsidise their water systems in some way, yet in most of Africa governments have traditionally turned to donors to provide these subsidies in the absence of a sufficient local tax base.
Africa needs to find new ways to finance water developments, Cardone argues.
“There’s a lot of momentum and interest, it seems, for finding solutions for domestic capital providers and for governments to work differently, and to shift the paradigm in their own countries, and then regionally, on how to adapt to water with Africa-led solutions, rather than donor or NGO-led solutions.”
Taking water seriously
Despite the obvious reality that water is the most basic of necessities, many experts in the space believe African governments have tended to neglect the importance of securing water supplies.
Rashid Mbaziira, executive secretary of AMCOW, the African Ministers’ Council on Water, says decision makers lack access to basic data on metrics such as rainfall patterns that influence how water resources are governed. “Right now, we are more or less grappling in the dark,” he warns.
On the plus side, Mbaziira says there is “an increased level of appreciation of the challenge” around the continent. Yet he warns finance ministries struggle to understand the opportunity costs around failing to invest in water systems and remain reluctant to allocate “commensurate resources” to ensuring systems can adapt to climate change.
In addition to improved information systems, Mbaziira argues that Africa needs to invest in infrastructure to help manage resources more effectively. The challenge, he says, is to persuade those who hold the purse strings to realise that infrastructure ultimately offers a strong “return on investment”, benefiting multiple sectors of the economy, as well as promoting health and wellbeing.
Morocco’s approach
Morocco is pressing ahead with an ambitious agenda to modernise its water infrastructure. At the forefront of its plans is an expansion of desalination capacity. In an interview with African Business, Morocco’s equipment and water minister Nizar Baraka notes that capacity grew from 35m cubic metres in 2021, to 350m cubic metres today. By 2030, the minister says, Morocco aims to expand desalination capacity to 1,700m cubic metres – enough to supply 60% of the country’s drinking water.
Morocco plans to rely exclusively on renewable energy to power its desalination facilities. This helps to address one of the key criticisms of desalination, namely that the process tends to be carbon intensive. Baraka adds that the abundance of wind and solar resources in the North African country also reduces the cost of desalination by 50%, to just 40 cents per cubic metre.
Desalinisation is vital, Baraka says, due to the impact of climate change.
“With climate change and the impact of climate change in Morocco, we will lose lots of our capacities,” says the minister. He notes that Morocco has lost 30% of its water capacity since the 1980s and faces losing another 30% by 2040. “That means that we have to find new solutions.”
Baraka that Morocco’s experience with desalination provides a “very good model” for parts of sub-Saharan Africa to emulate. A growing number of African countries are exploring desalinisation solutions; Senegal, for example, signed a deal with Saudi company ACWA Power in July to build a facility near Dakar that could supply 400,000 cubic metres of drinking water each day.
Moroccan companies are ready to partner with governments south of the Sahara, says Baraka. He highlights how Moroccan companies are experts in mobile desalinisation technology (which can supply water, for example, only during the dry season when it is most needed).
Alongside desalinisation and wastewater treatment, Morocco is also investing in “water highways” – which function in a somewhat similar way to the ancient khettaras in transferring water from areas where there is a surplus supply to areas that are in deficit. Baraka notes that the country has already completed a 66km highway to supply residents of Rabat and Casablanca with water from the Sebou River. By 2035, the minister says, the highway network will extend to 400km.
Learning from North Africa
Youssef Brouziyne, Middle East and North Africa representative for the International Water Management Institute, agrees that sub-Saharan Africa can take important lessons from countries like Morocco and Egypt that have experience in delivering water megaprojects.
“Finance is a big issue,” he says. “And to solve this obstacle many countries in MENA worked on first putting in place the right regulatory landscape that gives confidence to investors, to development funds, to come and be part of these big projects.”
Brouziyne notes that public-private partnerships are widely used in megaprojects in North Africa. While foreign investors often play a key role, domestic companies have also built-up expertise over the years and are now starting to export capabilities abroad. Morocco’s SGTM, for example, has worked on major dam projects in other African countries including Cameroon and Burkina Faso.
Yet the megaprojects that play an increasing role in North Africa also have downsides. Dams, for example, can be effective at storing and regulating the use of water. But dams – particularly in hot climates – also suffer from high rates of water loss from reservoirs. Evaporation from Lake Nasser (the reservoir formed upstream of Egypt’s Aswan Dam) amounts to 10-16bn cubic metres per year, equivalent to 20% to 30% of the country’s water allocation under the 1952 Nile Treaty.
According to Brouziyne, megaprojects are “just part of the solution”. While they can help deliver answers to water supply, African governments and corporates also need to look at demand, he says. “It is good to work on supply, but we definitely need to have control and manage the demand and the use.”
Water-intensive sectors, particularly agriculture, but also industries such as mining and even data centres need to take steps to reduce their water footprint, says Brouziyne, while ensuring their activities minimise harm to water quality.
As large parts of Africa face a drier future, innovation in managing both the supply and demand of water will be more vital than ever.