Zimbabwean Deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Vangelis Peter Haritatos
John Cassim
In 2000, water experts in Africa agreed that water communities across the continent should utilize existing water resources for socio-economic development, poverty alleviation, regional integration, and environmental sustainability.
The year 2025 was agreed upon as the time when a review would be conducted while charting a new roadmap.
Over the years, Africa has made progress, but the reality is that the continent has not yet achieved a state where water resources are significantly contributing to socio-economic development.
The time has now arrived for Africa to rethink its approach moving forward. The vision adopted in 2000 remains valid, but the timeframe initially set has proven insufficient for the goals to be fully achieved.
In a bid to develop a new vision that will guide efforts from 2025 onwards, water experts from across the continent have converged in Harare for a three-day AMCOW – Southern Africa Sub-Regional Meeting on the Post-2025 Africa Water Vision and Policy.
\ConserveZim spoke to Dr Rashiid Mbazira, the Executive Secretary of the African Ministers Council on Water, to get his views.
“We cannot continue doing the same things and expect different results. So, the gathering here is to confer with member states and our other partners in the region on what we need to do differently to realize that vision going forward,” Rashiid said.
The new agenda is expected to align with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which envisions a prosperous Africa relying on its resources to play a greater role in the global community. Water security is a key highlight of Agenda 2063.
Various speakers hinted that the continent failed to achieve a number of the set goals due to a lack of political will and insufficient financing from both governments and the private sector.
FINANCING
Insufficient financing for the sector has been identified as one of the main reasons why the water sector is not fully playing its role or contributing as it should to achieving aspirations for economic growth and social transformation.
“Then there’s also another aspect to it. As the water sector, have we effectively presented the business case for improving the investment outlook and increasing local or domestic allocations to the sector to enable us to fulfill our role?
Because you see, the management of water is in some respects a public good, and in other respects, it can contribute to economic growth. But we need to balance these two aspects. We also need to clearly articulate water’s contribution to driving other productive sectors. If we consider, for instance, food security, the only way we will be able to increase production and agricultural productivity is through irrigation, developing land for irrigation, which means we need water to irrigate in order to produce more,” Rashiid explained.
The conference participants agreed on the need to foster cross-sector understanding of the role of water to encourage investment in agriculture for increased food production.
Member states need to allocate sufficient resources to ensure the availability of water for irrigation and to manage the water used in irrigation or on farms to prevent environmental pollution.
The issue extends beyond just agriculture, also impacting peace and security. The recent droughts in several regions of the continent have resulted in the forced displacement of people.
And when people move from their regions to other areas, they compete for resources, often leading to conflict.
The AMCOW Executive Secretary stated that there are many opportunities for water to contribute to job creation, peace and security, and trade through industrialization.
“But at the moment, we are primarily viewing water through the lens of ‘water is life and sanitation is dignity.’ We need to make other sectors appreciate its broader value. When we succeed in this, the Minister of Finance will recognise the rationale for allocating more resources to the water sector to develop the necessary infrastructure, because they will see the potential for economic returns,” Rashiid added.
GROUNDWATER
Discussions during the conference have so far demonstrated the interconnection between groundwater and surface water resources.
Unfortunately, the extent of the continent’s groundwater resources is currently not well understood. While groundwater is extensively used across the continent, scientific data on what lies beneath the surface is limited.
Groundwater is heavily utilized in the rural economy and is largely unmetered.
“We have not invested sufficiently in understanding this resource and how we can recharge it, because it is not a limitless supply.
Aquifers need to be recharged. If we understand the recharge characteristics, we can determine sustainable extraction levels without depleting the resource. This knowledge also informs the best ways to manage it, protect it from pollution, and regulate its utilization,” Rashiid warned, amidst concerns raised during the conference about Africa potentially facing a groundwater drought soon.
“Because right now, very few countries can definitively state whether they are utilizing their groundwater resources sustainably. This is because we lack precise data on extraction rates and the overall volume of the resource. We urgently need to address this knowledge gap,” Rashiid added.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean Deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Vangelis Peter Haritatos, officially opened the Southern Africa Sub-Regional Meeting on the Post-2025 Africa Water Vision and Policy.
He stated that the Government has launched a significant initiative to enhance water security for rural communities.
“We are implementing this under the Presidential Rural Development 8.0 Programme, which is projected to benefit over 1.8 million rural households. Under this program, we have committed to drilling 35,000 boreholes, one in each village of Zimbabwe, where we will install 35,000 solar pumps, 140,000 solar panels, 140,000 water tanks, 70,000 fish ponds, and develop 35,000 hectares of nutrition gardens, collectively known as Village Business Units (VBUs).
We will implement a similar approach for the 9,600 rural schools in Zimbabwe, which we collectively call School Business Units,” he said.