SOON WE WILL HAVE TO DRINK AIR

The privatisation of Ghana's water

As part of the trade justice campaign, Christian Aid is calling for international trade rules and practices to be rewritten with poverty reduction as their highest priority. This example from Ghana shows how rich countries are pushing policies on poor countries with little evidence that they will help those who are in most need.

Hawa

In Maamobi, a slum district of Ghana's capital Accra, poor families live in compounds clustered around a courtyard. Hawa Amadu is the landlady of one such compound. The compound has no pipes, no water tanks and no boreholes for the 32 families - 156 people - that live there. The families have to walk over a mile to fetch water.

Hawa says she spends about 40p a day on water - about the same as a London family. Her income, however, is a minute fraction of what people earn in London. 'Sometimes I will go without food so my grandchildren can have water,' says Hawa. 'The government should understand this - water comes before food. Soon we will have to drink air.'

Water sold here

The challenge facing Ghana is ensuring Hawa, and thousands of others like her, get the water supply they need. In rich countries, governments were able to build basic infrastructure. However, in poor countries governments are heavily indebted and public spending is controlled by international organisations.

The solution, according to international institutions and foreign governments, including that of the UK, is to apply the rules of the global market to Ghana's beleaguered water sector. They argue for creating public/private partnerships (PPP's) and opening up the water services sector to foreign competition. To this end, the UK has promised £9.6 million in aid to help connect more people to water supplies in Ghana. But the money will only be released when the government of Ghana has received bids from foreign companies wanting to run and manage urban water supplies.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have also made water privatisation a condition of giving aid to Ghana. In spite of increasing opposition from ordinary Ghanaians, the government has agreed to invite foreign companies to bid. Transnational corporations are already bidding for business.

The state-run Ghana Water Company will retain ownership of water pipes, pumping stations and treatment plants, and will bear all the risks of the loans taken out to expand water supply. Meanwhile, two transnational corporations will run the urban water system. The state water board will keep the costly, unprofitable job of supplying water to the countryside, where Ghana's poorest people live.

The price Hawa pays for water is already on the increase as, even before privatisation takes place, Ghana's water is given a 'market value' to make it more attractive to private-sector operators. But for Hawa and many of her neighbours, the fundamental problem remains not being connected to mains water. Companies could use their profits to invest in new areas - but there is no requirement for them to do so. As long as they have to deliver dividends to shareholders, it will be difficult for them to justify investment in poor, non-profitable areas.

There are alternatives to PPP which involve communities of poor people in the running and management of their own water supplies. But such projects have not been considered despite being successful in the past. The conditions imposed by international donors - including the UK - make these alternatives increasingly unlikely and appear to lock Ghana's government into PPP. Ghana's water, it seems, must be run for the benefit of shareholders in rich countries rather than for the good of poor people in Ghana.

Christian Aid believes that decisions on water - the most vital of all development issues - must be taken freely by the national governments concerned, after full consultation with those most affected. In Ghana, consultation with groups of poor people has been minimal and two successive, democratically elected governments have found themselves locked into choosing foreign private-sector partners to provide clean water to those currently without it.

Christian Aid Week is from 12th to 20th May this year.