Africa: Lack of Clean Water Kills More People Than War

Lack of access to clean water is likely to have a much bigger impact on sustainable economic development for countries in sub-Saharan Africa than previously envisaged, says UNDP's newly launched Human Development Report, 2006. This is because scarcity of water and sanitation is a crisis that is not appreciated nationally and globally, and attracts less political leadership as well as less attention from donors. According to Kevin Watkins, the director of the Human Development Report Unit at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), access to clean water is the most effective way of ensuring economic growth because it keeps away disease and avoids undue loss of manpower for devoted to the search for water instead of being channelled to production. Mr Watkins, the author of the report, was in Nairobi last week on his way to Cape Town where he launched the report, which is entitled, Beyond scarcity: Power politics and the global water crisis.

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