The Our Water Our Right Africa Coalition (OWORAC) launched the 4th edition of its annual Week of Action Against Water Privatisation, coinciding with the World Bank’s Annual General Meeting. This year’s event is being held from October 21st to October 26th, 2024, under the theme ‘Water Justice Over Profit’, highlighting the growing demand across Africa for equitable access to water, free from the constraints of privatisation and profit-driven policies. 

The coalition includes trade unions, community leaders and activists, national and global NGOs, academics, social media activists and more.  This week is a call to all Africans and allies worldwide to stand together against the privatisation of water resources and demand ‘Water Justice Over Profit’.

Although the World Bank and regional development banks deny that they support privatisation of water services and resources (they learned that the word privatisation draws too much opposition), they currently support an even more nefarious form of privatisation, known as ‘financialisation’.  The central argument is that since governments – at all levels – can’t raise the needed funds (thanks in no small measure to IMF austerity policies and unresolved global debt problems), then private capital must be drawn in.  The banks are convinced that the world’s biggest asset managers will bring their untold funds to water, sanitation and other public services that our families and communities depend on.  The main role of government then is to create the ‘enabling environment’ to attract domestic and foreign capital to invest in public services.  

The enabling environment comprises a number of elements :

• Changing laws and regulations to prioritise the needs of private investors

• Providing financial incentives to attract private investors – tax breaks; government guarantees of private profits; derisking private investments; drafting contracts to meet the needs of private capital, etc.

• Ensuring that public outcry is reduced to a minimum, including by limiting the rights of free expression, gathering, etc. 

• Attacking and undermining public sector unions 

Some private funds are flowing in high- and middle-income countries, where profits are likely.  As can be expected, private funds are not going to low-income countries, where needs are greatest but profits not as attractive.  Overall, these private funds are nowhere near sufficient to meet the needs of the water and sanitation services.  And, where they are present, private investors extract huge amounts through ‘innovative financial engineering’, which includes:

• High gearing (raising debt levels of the former public utility, and using these funds, not for investments and improvements, but to feed shareholders and further corporate expansions)

• Tax evasion and avoidance

• Outsourcing the labour force to low-wage, precarious labour brokers

• Tariff increases

• Gaming the regulator to ensure that investment funds can also be siphoned off in dividends  

So far, the World Bank remains immune to criticism of its policies, including when their own research shows that they don’t work.  Its pro-market ideology blinds the Bank to the failures of the past decades.  

Resistance to privatisation will continue, despite attempts to muzzle all opposition.  The global water justice network gathers credible evidence and analysis, which it shares across affected communities.  The network informs, educates and mobilises.  People and organisations concerned about access to water and sanitation need to add their strength to the resistance, such that elected officials hear and respect the voices of the people.