A round-up of the news, highlights and announcements from the second day of the annual water conference in Stockholm
The highlight of World Water Week day two was the Africa Focus sessions. Discussion points included the state and scale of hydropower, transboundary water management and the declining reliance on donor-funded infrastructure projects on the continent. We caught up with some of the speakers to discuss water challenges in more depth. Keep reading to see what they had to say.
In Nigeria, even though we have separate ministries for energy and water resources, they have a very strong relationship. We recognise that there is a meeting point between energy and water and that is the need to generate hydropower. We have over 240 dams in Nigeria and we still have some under construction, although not all of them have power components. The Manbilla dam is expected to generate about 3050 megawatts of electricity. The Kashambilla dam project is under the ministry of water resources, but because it has a power component, we work with our energy colleagues.
We are doing well for water in Senegal. We have good rivers and the millenium development goal (MDG) targets for water have been achieved in both rural and urban areas. Our main water challenge today is sanitation, where we have not achieved our targets in either rural or urban areas. The government is working to develop a new investment plan to increase access to sanitation while keeping the good results we have for water. We are hopeful that water and sanitation will be one of the major sustainable development goals.
Is #water a human right or an economic good? Yes. And both sides of the debate should get over it. #wwweek