Private investment for developing country water

By Tim Worstall | 22 June 2005

The Guardian yesterday ran a piece on water and sewage services in Addis Ababa. A lot of effort is devoted to discussing the various ways in which aid can help, whether it should be delivered through central government, regional, whether expensive expatriate experts should be used, and the ties that come with the aid. Nowhere is there a discussion of a true alternative.

Quite obviously it is true that there is a shortage of capital with which to build a functioning sanitation system and similarly, it is quite obvious that the money will have to come from outside Ethiopia. Is governmental aid the only possible source of such capital? Quite clearly not, as our own privatised sanitation system shows, and as that of the French, which has always been private.

As a number of schemes have shown private companies are perfectly happy to take on the challenge of providing such services. If our desire (a wholly admirable one I might add) is to deliver water and sewage services as quikly as possible, why is this not one of the options being discussed?

I have no objection to such a solution being rejected on the merits and one way or the other, but to rule out, fail to even mention, the solution which we ourselves use does seem a little, well, odd.