Geneva, 10 – 11 December

Water Resources Overview

The continental SADC region (less the Democratic Republic of Congo) has a total land area of nearly 6.8 million sq. km.  Regional estimates put renewable freshwater resources at an annual average of 650 billion m³, which is distributed amongst rivers, lakes and groundwater bodies throughout the region.  There are fifteen major rivers shared among the continental SADC member-states. (See Annex 2)  All the continental SADC countries share one or more river basins, as noted in Table 1.  Namibia, for instance, one of the most arid countries in the region, has access to five international river basins.  Mozambique shares nine of its rivers with other countries.  The Zambezi basin, the largest and probably most crucial in Southern (as opposed to central) Africa, crosses eight countries.

Table 1. 

 Shared River Basins within the Continental SADC States

Source: Adapted from Pallet, J. (ed.), Sharing Water in Southern Africa, 1997

Climate is a major influence on the availability of water in the region.  Rainfall patterns vary dramatically within the region, and in many parts rainfall is unreliable, leaving some areas with an abundance of water and others a scarcity.  Drought conditions normally trigger serious hydrological imbalance, causing loss or damage to crops, shortage of water for people, livestock and wildlife, as well as famine and disease. The result has had severe impacts on a wide range of environmental and economic activities in the region. For instance, the droughts of 1991-92 and 1994-95 reduced economic activity and impaired the quality of life for most people and wildlife.

At the same time, floods from occasional torrential rains have in some areas brought about extensive damage to property and death to people and animals.  Even though the ramifications of drought are widely recognised, it is worth noting that other areas are prone to flooding of significant magnitude. For instance, after the 1994-95 drought, large floods occurred in the Limpopo and Incomati Rivers in 1996.  In the same year the Pungue River also experienced devastating floods which resulted in the loss of lives, property damage, and economic disruption.  By and large, the most significant characteristic of water resources for the SADC region will be increasing water scarcity as demand escalates under rapidly growing population pressures. In the quarter century between 1995 and 2020, the region’s population is likely to almost double to 262 million people.  The number of people added to the region’s population every year is likely to increase from 4.1 million people in 1999 to 5.75 million by 2020, even though the annual population growth rate is likely to have peaked during 1990-95 at 2.92 percent and begun a downturn to reach 2.36 percent by 2020.  Unless much greater attention is given to addressing the problems of the rural sector, 70 percent of the population increases in the region, between now and 2020, is expected to be in urban areas.  Rapid urbanisation is expected to triple the urban population in eight SADC countries, and almost quadruple Malawi’s urban population.

Unless remedied, growing water scarcity will severely limit SADC countries from addressing the development challenges of poverty reduction, food security, and industrial development, as briefly discussed in the next sub-sections. 

Poverty and Water

Poverty has risen steadily in the region with no indications that the numbers of poor will diminish over the short term.  If this trend is to be reversed, people's standard of living must be improved, and water availability is a key to this shift.  The poor generally have limited access to clean drinking water and adequate sanitation.  More than 60 million people in the SADC region lack access to safe water, and more than 65 million lack basic sanitation services.  As a result, limited health conditions and high mortality rates result in reduced human welfare and lower human productivity.

International Food Policy Research Institute, Prospects for a 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment in Southern Africa.  Paper presented at Workshop on Approaches to Rural Poverty Alleviation in SADC Countries, Cape Town, 19-22 February 1996

Amongst the 12 SADC countries analysed in this document, well over half the rural population lives below the poverty line in their respective countries.  However, this aggregate total masks the uneven distribution across and within the 12 countries, and reflects different indicators of rural poverty.  What is striking from the data available for Southern Africa is that poverty is such a predominately rural phenomenon, even when compared with East and South Asia or other parts of Africa.  Even in South Africa, the most urbanised of SADC countries, 81 percent of the poorest people live in rural areas.  In Lesotho, 91 percent of the poorest households are found in the rural sector; in Malawi, the figure is 95 percent, in Zambia (also one of SADC’s most urbanised countries) 76 percent, and in Zimbabwe 92 percent.

Lack of access to food is a major contributor to malnutrition and poverty.  Excluding South Africa and Mauritius (and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Seychelles which are not considered in detail in this document), the ten remaining SADC countries, for which data are available, are estimated to have more than 4.3 million malnourished pre-school children, i.e., 25 percent of the pre-school children in the region.  Tanzania and Mozambique each account for more than a million of these children.  Botswana, despite its relatively high per capita GDP and the region’s lowest prevalence of poverty (15 percent), ranked third highest in the national percentage of malnourished children (27 percent).  Between 1975 and 1990, the proportion of pre-school children who were malnourished actually increased in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.

Food Security and Water

Poverty and food security are closely intertwined.  Most of SADC' s poor live in rural areas where household food security is reflected in insufficient food production or seasonal food insecurity due to cyclical rainfall patterns. Food security appears to have deteriorated very significantly during the last 10-15 years, with the number of food-insecure people in the region, excluding South Africa, having almost doubled from 22 million in the early 1980s to 39 million people in the early 1990s.  This number translates into an increase from 37 percent to 46 percent the proportion of the region’s population that is food insecure.

For the rural poor in particular, food security will require increased food production, which relies on, among other factors, reliable access to water.  Providing sufficient water supplies can only be accomplished by amongst other measures, expanding irrigation systems, improving water harvesting techniques, implementing water and soil conservation practices, introducing new drought resistant varieties, or -- what is most likely -- some combination of all these techniques. 

In many parts of the SADC region, the shortage of water is seriously constraining aggregate food production as well, which has implications for both rural and urban populations.  Projections for food production for the sub-region are not available.  However, continuation of recent food production trends will lead to a rapidly increasing gap between production and requirements.  During the period 1979-93, the average annual growth rates of food production per capita was negative in every SADC country for which data are available.  By 1993-94, Southern African countries were producing only 62-93 percent of the food per capita they produced in 1979-81.  Eight countries were producing less than 80 percent of their per capita production of 1979-81. 

Simply maintaining current low per capita consumption levels will require either a significant improvement in past production trends or a continued increase in imports -- even though the share of food consumption met through imports is already high and increasing for several countries.  Three countries -- Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia -- imported about two-thirds of their total cereal consumption in 1991-92, while Lesotho and Swaziland imported about half of their cereal consumption.  Although the 1991-92 imports were in part caused by drought, there is a strong trend towards larger imports of cereals.

Presently, about one-third of the people in the region live in drought-prone areas.  Water shortages are a serious impediment to intensifying agriculture and bringing new lands into production.  Crop production via irrigation places a high demand on water resources. However, these irrigated crops also tend to yield more food per unit area than rain-fed crops. These factors increase demand to expand water delivery infrastructure systems, including small-scale irrigation systems and larger, more expensive dams, reservoirs and canal networks.

Inland and coastal fish production, an important nutritional source in the region, is mainly dependent on surface water systems.  Although the total fish catch is expanding steadily in many countries, per capita fish consumption is decreasing because human population growth exceeds the amount of fish harvested.  Many authorities also fear that unsustainable fishing practice and increased pollution of rivers, lakes and coastal waters will eventually cause a decline in the number of fish.  Fish production from aquaculture is also entirely dependent on good water quality.  Finally, livestock production relies on sufficient grazing areas, which are directly linked to water availability. Drought conditions result in large numbers of animals dying, due to the lack of sufficient pasture and the scarcity of drinking water.

Industrial Development and Water

The rivers, lakes and ground water of southern Africa are a major input for "fuelling" the engine of economic growth in various key sectors.  The SADC region has a very large number of dams that generate hydroelectricity, including the Kariba, Cahora Bassa and Kafue Gorge.  However, only about one percent of the region's hydroelectric potential, outside South Africa, has been developed.  At the same time, existing electrical generation is threatened as a result of low water levels in numerous reservoirs, principally due to the periodic drought conditions that afflict the region.  For instance in Zambia, during the drought of 1992-93, generation of electricity fell by about 12.2 percent, recovered by 3 and 4 percent respectively in 1993 and 1994, and fell again by 2 and 11.2 percent in 1995 and 1996 respectively.  This decline in power output had an adverse impact on many economic activities, including industrial and commercial performance, and forced Zambia to import electricity from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe

The mining, manufacturing and service sectors employ the vast majority of persons working in the formal economy.  Even though the present level of industrial development in the majority of the SADC countries is small compared to world standards, as the economic development picks up in the region, it is expected that industrial growth will increase, including the requirements for manufacturing.  This growth in industrial activities will exert added pressure on the demand for water across the region.  Industry currently consumes less abstracted water than either the domestic or agricultural sectors in every SADC country.  Moreover, as a proportion of total industrial costs, water purchases are typically only 1-3 percent.  However, it is certain that the industrial consumption of water will need to increase in the future as mining, manufacturing and urban service production expands.

Whilst there are growing demands from these industries for inexpensive and reliable water, these same industries are identified as the primary source of pollution in the region, producing tonnes of effluents, solid waste and air pollutants.  Major polluters include thermoelectric power stations that burn coal or petroleum, fertiliser factories, textile mills, chemical manufacturing plants, pulp and paper plants, slaughterhouses, and tanneries.  Water is the usual recipient of industrial pollution because disposal of wastes into water bodies is cheap and convenient.  Similarly, in coastal areas, most industries dispose of their untreated wastes directly into streams and rivers running into the ocean.  Industrial wastes are found in the ocean waters along the entire SADC coastline - from Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to Baia do Cacuaco and Bas Zaire in Angola and the Democratic  Republic of Congo, respectively.

Macro-economic Performance and Water

The importance of the water sector is often not taken into consideration in assessing the trends and potential for macro-economic performance.  In the case of SADC countries, however, the challenges and constraints of the water sector are indicative of the trade-offs and issues facing SADC governments in trying to improve public sector performance and spur economic and social development.  Government policy is important for helping to determine the supply and demand for water,  either as a  public or private economic good. Generally speaking, water, as a public utility in SADC countries, has historically been under-priced, leading to waste and inefficiencies in the use of the water itself, as well as overt or implicit subsidies to the largest consumer of water, the agricultural sector.

Thus, water charges and pricing -- both for human consumption and for industrial and agricultural purposes -- represent important but still under appreciated economic policy requirements for most SADC member-states.  Broadly speaking, the pricing of water should be based on trying to maximise the following six objectives:

tariffs should cover the direct and overheads costs of water provision, including debt charges, and thereby eliminate the dependence of the water enterprises on government subsidies.  There may be exceptions in some rural communities where water is a social good, thereby deserving of subsidies;

• prices should encourage production efficiency within the water utility;

• prices should encourage allocative efficiency in the distribution of water supplies amongst competing users;

• tariffs for fresh and wastewater services must be affordable to all households purchasing them and thus meet both economic and social objectives;

• tariffs should support the objective of encouraging water conservation, thus lowering the demand for additional water resources; and

• tariffs should encourage the protection of the environment from pollution.

Closely related to water pricing policy is the role of public expenditures in the water sector. Traditionally, both recurrent and capital spending on the water sector have been very low.  For example, the budget provision for water and sanitation in Zambia amounted to only 1.74 percent of the total budget, compared to the social sectors, such as education and health, whose share of the total budget were 18.5 and 13.3 percent, respectively.  Capital expenditures for the Department of Water Affairs accounted for only 0.5 percent  of the total  between 1991 and 1994.  The share for investment in water supply projects (including agriculture, energy, and public sanitation) amounted to only 5.3 percent for the seven-year period from 1988 to 1994.  These low expenditure patterns, coupled with inefficiencies in the use of available resources for both capital and recurrent needs, have resulted in the sector being generally ill-prepared to meet the challenges now placed on it.  The Lesotho Water and Sewage Authority is no doubt indicative of the problems faced, having recorded increasing operating losses every year since 1993-94, and an organisational structure characterised by excessive bureaucracy, assets of declining worth, overstaffing, and weak internal cost controls.

As SADC countries have sought to implement economic reform measures, the inefficiencies within public water utilities have made them one of the prime candidates for some form of private sector participation in their management, operations or ownership.  At the least, SADC water utilities are beginning initiatives in public enterprise reform aimed at improving efficiency, cost recovery, and financial viability.  Other options being considered include various kinds of management contracts, concession contracts, or BOOT (Build-Own-Operate-Transfer) contracts.  Outright privatisation of the water utilities has not yet been implemented by any SADC government.

III. SADC and Water Resources: The Emerging Policy Consensus >>

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