Johannesburg — AN EXPERT on water resource management has called on African governments to make water one of the key pillars of Africa's foreign policy.

Water is an economic lifeblood and features prominently in the Millennium Development Goals as a key resource.

Research cites drought-prone Africa's failure to invest in infrastructure to preserve water as one of the reasons for the continent's economic stagnation.

Reginald Tekateka, chairman of the technical advisory committee of the African Ministerial Conference on Water, told Business Day it was an "honest oversight" on the part of African governments not to have a "water attaché" at their embassies.

An attaché is a trained diplomat who has been posted abroad to focus on a certain area of speciality.

SA has military, labour, cultural and home affairs attaché at some of its missions abroad.

Mr Tekateka said he was not scolding African governments on the issue but he believed that water had not been "fully appreciated" as an important foreign policy goal.

Wafula Okumu, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Security Studies and an expert on water policy, said water was increasingly becoming a security issue in Africa.

"We need to raise the alarm to draw attention to this matter," Dr Okumu said.

Water was considered a "soft issue" and was not put in the same league as other matters of economic importance in the execution of foreign policy, he said.

The third United Nations World Water Development report warned last year that countries were failing to use water in a sustainable fashion.

"Growing international trade in goods and services can aggravate water stress in some countries," it said.