Water is life, not Profit”: Activists rally against privatization

L-R: Assistant Director, Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), Zikora Ibeh, CAPPA’s Executive Director Akinbode Oluwafemi, CAPPA’s Water Campaign Programme Officer Sefa Ikpa, and Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos, Prof. Adelaja Odukoya, at the press conference in Lagos to kick off the 2025 Africa Week of Action Against Water Privatisation.

Stanley Ihedigbo

With droughts, floods, and rising temperatures threatening water security in Africa, a united front of activists and community leaders is demanding that governments prioritize public water systems over private interests, declaring that “water is life, not profit.”

The event, convened by the Our Water Our Right Africa Coalition (OWORAC) in partnership with the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay (MBPP) Coalition, brought together grassroots movements, labour unions, civil society organisations, and community leaders to demand publicly governed water systems and reject privatization.

The theme of this year’s observance, “Public Water for Climate Resilience,” highlights the urgent need for equitable and sustainable water management in the face of the climate crisis. Oluwafemi noted that water is often the first victim of climate change, with droughts, floods, and rising temperatures intensifying water stress across Africa. Despite the UN’s recognition of the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right, African governments are succumbing to pressure to privatize water systems, handing control to profit-driven corporations.

The coalition rejected “false solutions” peddled by multinational corporations, such as desalination and privatization schemes, and instead called for publicly accountable systems to guarantee universal access.

In his speech, the Executive Director of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), Mr. Akinbode Oluwafemi emphasized that water is a human right and public trust, not a commodity for profit.

He said that this year’s event was particularly significant for two reasons: firstly, and for the first time in OWORAC’s organising history, this Week of Action is being held in partnership with the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay (MBPP) Coalition, a continent-wide network of organisations demanding climate justice and corporate accountability for environmental harm.

“This partnership symbolises the deepening recognition that water justice and climate justice are inseparable, and that to privatise water in an era of escalating climate shocks is to compound vulnerability and institutionalise inequality. Secondly, we are delighted to have in our midst the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water & Sanitation, Mr. Pedro Arrojo-Agudo,” he further said.

According to him, the participation of Special Rapporteur Pedro affirmed the global dimension of their struggle.

“It signals that the fight for equitable, publicly governed water systems is not confined to any geography. It is a universal human rights demand rooted in the moral premise that life itself cannot be commodified.

“Their steadfast advocacy and for continuing to illuminate the dangers of water privatisation while affirming the promise of democratic, climate-resilient alternatives. The theme of this year’s observance could not have been timelier. Across Africa, we are living through the harshest realities of the climate crisis, including droughts that parch our farmlands, floods that destroy homes, and rising temperatures that intensify water stress. In fact, water is often the first and most visible victim of climate change.

“In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a historical resolution recognising “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights” Sadly, this right is under threat in Africa by a twin problem of both government failure and nature’s response to man’s devastating use of the environment.

“At a time when we need stronger, publicly accountable systems to guarantee universal access, we are seeing growing pressure to privatise our water systems and hand control of this essential resource to profit-driven corporations, despite overwhelming public opposition. While nature cries for justice in the face of the climate emergency, capital smells opportunity. Multinational corporations now peddle desalination and other privatisation schemes as climate solutions, selling back to us the very water that belongs to the people”, he explained.

He further explained that they rejected these false solutions.

“We assert that the way we protect and govern water will determine whether our communities can endure the crises ahead. The resistance against the commodification of water from local communities is not an isolated struggle. It is part of a broader continental affirmation that public services, when transparently managed and democratically governed, form the very foundation of social justice and climate resilience. In this collective defiance lies the blueprint for survival.

“We are therefore deeply encouraged by the solidarity of our global allies, including Corporate Accountability in the United States and representatives of the United Nations. Your presence here reaffirms that the struggle for public water is not only African but universal,” he stressed.

In a press text for the week: Public water for climate resilience, signed by 20 international and national civil society organizations, Programme Officer, Water Campaign, Corporate Accountability Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), Ms. Sefa Ikpa, noted that Africa faces multiple and overlapping environmental challenges, and climate change in particular, often reveals itself most forcefully through water.

“Across the continent, intense and prolonged droughts, devastating floods, coastal erosion, and increasing unpredictability in rainfall are disrupting lives and livelihoods. In the Horn of Africa, successive seasons of drought have dried rivers and wells, leaving millions dependent on humanitarian aid. In places like Mozambique and Nigeria, catastrophic cyclones and floods submerge boreholes and wells, leaving thousands without safe water and compounding outbreaks of water-borne diseases.

“In North Africa, rising seas push saltwater into fragile coastal aquifers, while intensifying heat drains rivers and reservoirs through rapid evaporation, leaving communities caught between contaminated groundwater and vanishing surface supplies. In the Sahel, irregular rainfall unsettles agriculture and fuels conflict over shrinking water sources. All of these shocks collide with decades of underinvestment in public water systems, leaving societies doubly exposed to climate extremes and deprived of the infrastructure that might have cushioned their impact.

“Ordinarily, these challenges should serve as a wake-up call for governments to invest in stronger publicly governed water systems capable of protecting life under climate stress. Yet, in many African states, the opposite is taking place. Governments, often at the behest of the private sector and international financiers, have seized on these crises to justify the transfer of water provision to private actors. The most striking example is the surge in desalination projects, promoted as a climate-proof solution. But desalination is no panacea. It is extremely energy-intensive, largely dependent on fossil fuels, and produces a concentrated salty waste called brine that pollutes marine ecosystems, destroys fisheries, and further dispossesses coastal communities”, she emphasized.

She explained that in other parts of the world where it has been introduced, such as the Carlsbad plant in California, the cost of desalinated water is 73 percent higher than the existing supply, according to Food & Water Watch, even as it has been flagged multiple times for environmental violations.

“In Tunisia, desalinated water is estimated to cost up to three times more than reservoir water, with energy alone making up forty percent of the cost. Such exorbitant expenses create the perfect opening for multinational corporations to build and operate the plants, granting private engineering firms and utilities access to systems that were once public.

“For example, last year, the Kingdom of Morocco entered into a 35-year concession with Veolia to develop and manage a massive seawater desalination project, planned to be the largest in Africa and the second largest in the world, and framed as a solution to supply drinking water to drought-stricken regions of the country. Yet Veolia’s global record is far from reassuring. In Bucharest, Romania, as in other places where its record is marred by controversy, its 25-year water concession saw tariffs rise almost sixfold, forcing households to bear the heavy costs of privatisation.

“We reject this trend outright. The climate crisis must not be turned into a pretext for water privatisation. Climate resilience is not an abstract slogan, nor is it built on the transfer of public goods into private hands. It is the capacity of societies to absorb shocks, protect ecosystems and guarantee continuity of life when disasters strike. Public water systems, when adequately financed and managed democratically, are the backbone of such resilience. They carry the potential to plan for the long term, to extend service to marginalised communities, and to integrate social equity with environmental protection,” she stressed.

She further explained that privatisation, by contrast, undermines resilience and thrives on short-term profit.

“Its record across Africa and beyond is consistent, neglecting low-income and rural communities considered unprofitable, as well as raising tariffs that lock the poor out of access. In times of climate stress, such a model only deepens exclusion and leaves societies exposed to disaster.

To start with, the group urged African governments to put human needs before financial returns and called on international institutions to end the destructive practice of tying privatisation conditions to loans.

“We further demand that corporate profiteers take their hands off Africa’s water and stop using the climate crisis as a pretext to plunder the environment and control a resource so fundamental to survival. Africa’s water cannot be auctioned off to the highest bidder without imperilling the very basis of life.

“The alternative is not utopian. Climate-resilient water governance can be achieved through pathways that strengthen public systems rather than dismantle them. Sustained public financing must be channelled into water and sanitation infrastructure, ensuring that utilities are not only functional but robust enough to withstand future shocks.

“Investments in renewable energy can reduce the carbon intensity of water provision, ensuring that adaptation efforts do not fuel the very crisis they seek to mitigate. Protection and restoration of watersheds, wetlands and aquifers can anchor ecological resilience, while participatory governance guarantees that communities themselves shape decisions about their water.

“Crucially, the incorporation of indigenous practices such as rainwater storage, aquifer recharge and community-led catchment management can provide culturally grounded, low-cost and sustainable pathways to expand resilience in the face of climate uncertainty. Public water partnerships across regions can facilitate peer learning, exchange of expertise and continental solidarity, building African solutions to African challenges without reproducing dependence on corporate monopolies.

“Climate resilience will not be delivered through privatisation schemes that entrench inequality and exclusion. It will only be built through strong, transparent and publicly accountable systems that protect water as a common good and guarantee access for all. Africa’s governments must resist the tide of commodification and instead chart a future where water remains firmly in public hands, managed for people and not for profit, and secured as the foundation of life in an era of intensifying climate crisis, ” she stated.

Other speakers include, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, Mr. Pedro Arrojo-Agudo; Coordinator, Africa Water Justice Network (AWJN), Leonard Shang-Quartey; Water Campaign Director, Corporate Accountability (CA), Neil Gupta; Representative, Senegal Water Justice Network (SWJN), Ms. Fatou Diouf; and Director, Matabeleland Institute for Human Rights (MIHR), Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Khumbulani Maphosa.

Also, Representative, Gender CC, Women For Climate Justice, South Africa, Ndivile Mokoena; Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos, Professor Adelaja Odutola Odukoya; and Assistant Executive Director, CAPPA, Ms. Zikorah Ibeh.