On a Saturday in December, in a ceremony punctuated by singing, dancing and a rain shower, the South African village of Ramotshinyadi formally assumed ownership of a new network that provides clean water for its nearly 10,000 residents.
"Now that we have water, my dream will be to see our children being committed to their studies … without being disturbed by elders sending them to riverbanks to fetch water," said Hannah Kobela, a local who has family living in Ramotshinyadi. On Dec. 8, the community officially took over the water system from The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation and USAID, which co-led the project as part of a unique partnership.
At least 340 million people in Africa — about one-third of the population — lack access to safe drinking water. In 2000, the United Nations and other organizations created Millennium Development Goals for water, sanitation and other vital concerns, aiming for improvements by 2015. But five years in, it was clear that "at the rate things were going, Africa was going backward," says William Asiko, president of The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation. Unless changes were made, he says, "Africans would be worse off by 2015 than they were when the Millennium Development Goals were set."
A Public-Private Partnership for Water Access
When it comes to water access, South Africans face a constellation of problems, starting with climate. The country's rainfall levels tend to be relatively low and erratic, with frequent droughts and floods. Other factors affecting water supply (in South Africa and elsewhere) include poor resource management, inadequate infrastructure, inefficient use, robust population growth, natural disasters and governance problems.
The resulting water scarcity presents an even more daunting list of problems, including dehydration, disease, interrupted educations and gender inequality.
The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation has committed, through its $30 million Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN), to provide clean drinking water to more than 2 million people in Africa by 2015. The initiative supports 42 water projects in 27 countries. Some of these projects are co-funded by USAID through its Water and Development Alliance (WADA) program.
Why partner on these issues? Asiko explains that USAID was "very good at doing infrastructure projects. They could build a dam, they could dig the boreholes ... they could do a lot of those things. They needed a partner who could help them with more of the software stuff: making community connections, connecting with governments."
For Thobekile Finger, a South Africa project specialist at USAID, the partnership with Coca-Cola "was an opportunity to leverage the resources we have so we can both make a far bigger impact than we would if we were working individually."
This content comes from Coca-Cola Journey and has been republished with permission. Read the full article at the Coca-Cola Journey website.
