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Coke, Diageo and WaterHealth launch water partnership
The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, Diageo plc, WaterHealth International and the International Finance Corporation have announced a strategic partnership to provide sustainable access to safe drinking water in Africa.
The ‘Safe Water for Africa’ (SWA) partnership will work with communities to drive the expansion of WHI’s innovative water service delivery model across the continent.
TCCAF, Diageo and WHI have committed more than US$6m in seed funding to deliver sustainable safe water access for communities across Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia in 2011, with new country programmes expected in 2012 and beyond.
Building on this core investment, SWA plans to raise a total of over $20m to fulfil its ambition of providing safe water to at least two million Africans by 2012.
The partnership will initially focus on West Africa in support of a region with tremendous promise, yet one that continues to face significant water challenges.
Despite repeated efforts by governments and other organisations to ease the water issues in the region, fewer West Africans have access to water than 20 years ago.
The SWA partnership is a private sector-led initiative based on the use of an innovative, but most importantly self-sustaining, model of water provision. WHI already installs, operates and maintains decentralised water treatment facilities (WaterHealth Centres)throughout the developing world. WaterHealth Centres are small modular structures that house water purification equipment to treat locally available water through a combination of sedimentation, pre-filtration and Ultra Violet technology.
Each Centre produces World Health Organization quality water that’s available for a nominal usage fee on site, or pumped to additional distribution points depending on the size and density of the community. WHI has a sustainable business model under which it constructs a WaterHealth Centre and provides long-term (10 year+) operations, maintenance and quality services to vulnerable communities for a low cost one-time investment.
The programme has won the backing of the World Bank, International Financial Corporation and other respected organisations.
Source: Diageo
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