Africa: Attaining the Millennium Development Goal for Water Supply And Sanitation

22 March 2005
African Development Bank (Abidjan)
press release

Tunis — France Hosts an International Conference On April 1 Organized By the AFDB

The African Development Bank (ADB) Group will host an international conference on water supply and sanitation in Paris on 1 April 2005. Under the patronage of the French President, this conference aims to attain the Millenium goal for water supply and sanitation in rural Africa. Concretely, this initiative seeks to set up a process which will help provide water access to 300 million men, women and children, through 2015, thanks to a renewed commitment from the international community and increased aid coordination and efficiency.

Africa has abundant water resources but the level of exploitation remains abysmally low with only 3% of the available resource extracted every year for use in households, agriculture and industry. As a result, only about 47% of the population has access to improved water supply (as against a global average of 71%) and 44% access to improved sanitation. Over 300 million Africans lack adequate water and sanitation services.

Within the perspective of the UN Millenium Summit next November, the conference will emphasize the importance of this Millenium goal for Africa's development: water supply and sanitation are, indeed, crucial factors of development, as they impact on health, education of people and particularly women. The conference will review the current situation in order to gauge the needs to met, the efforts to undertake and the obstacles to overcome. It will underline innovative strategies - among them the AfDB's - and good practices enabling to increase disbursement, programme efficiency and good aid coordination. It will thus allow for implementation of the main recommendations from the OECD Second High level forum for Harmonization and reinforcement of aid efficiency held in Paris in early March. The conference will lead to the adoption of a common policy statement, in which commitments made will demonstrate the international community's will to attain the Millenium goal for water supply and sanitation in rural Africa.

The conference will be co-chaired Mr. Michel Camdessus, former Managing Director of the IMF and the French President's personal Representative for Africa, and the President of the ADB Group, Mr. Omar Kabbaj, in the presence of the French Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry, Mr. Thierry Breton, and the French Minister of Cooperation, Development and Francophonie, Mr. Xavier Darcos. It will bring together some 200 participants, among whom will be 60 African Ministers of Finance, Cooperation and Water, European Ministers of Finance or Cooperation, representatives of regional (NEPAD, AMCOW ) and international bodies (World Bank, EIB, FAO, UNICEF ) as well as organisations representing civil society.

The conference will be held on April 1 2005 in the Pierre-Mendès-France Conference Center of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry, 139, rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris. Mr. Chanel Boucher, ADB's Vice-President in charge of Policy, Planning and Research, will take part in a press breakfast aimed at presenting the conference, on Thursday 24 March at 8:30 a.m. in the Foreign Press Center (Radio France building, Avenue Kennedy, Paris).

More details on the conference and press accreditation are available in the Bank's website: www.afdb.org

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