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Africa: stress on water, sanitation

STOCKHOLM: Poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water are threatening to undermine U.N. efforts to fight poverty, hunger and disease in Africa, Ministers and experts said on Tuesday.

While international aid is helping to bring food and medicine to many African nations, poor sanitation — which affects an estimated two-thirds of the continent — has been largely neglected and left to local villages and towns, according to the Water Ministers of Uganda, Ethiopia and Lesotho.

``Children pass away every other minute because they don't have access to clean water,'' said Maria Mutagamba, Uganda's Minister and chairwoman of the African Ministers Council of Water. The Ministers were among hundreds of experts and politicians gathered in Stockholm to discuss global water management.

Ms. Mutagamba, along with Ethiopia's Minister Shiferaw Jarso and Lesotho's counterpart Mamphono Khaketla, are heading the African Ministers' Initiative on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, AMIWASH, which aims to bring safe water and better sewage systems to the poverty-stricken continent.

``There is no one international organisation that looks at [water sanitation],'' Jarso said at a news conference.

Roberto Lenton, chairman of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, said clean water was key to meeting the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000 with the aim of halving poverty by 2015. — AP

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