Global IssuesSOUTHERN AFRICA: Securing Safe Water for a Million More
Long years of armed conflict have obstructed development in the areas on either side of the Angola-Namibia border. Now a 45 million dollar infrastructure upgrade is set to improve access to clean drinking water and decent sanitation for one million people.
Most people in this former conflict zone lack adequate access to clean drinking water and sanitation. The existing water supply system - several hundred kilometres of pipeline and an open canal - has been damaged by decades of civil war as well as the illegal off-take of water.
'For many years, the area around the Calueque dam in Angola was the theatre of wars between governments and various guerilla movements,' says the Kunene Transboundary Water Supply Project (KTWSP) co-chair, Dr Kuiri Tjipangandjara of Namibia Water Corporation, Namwater.
'It's unique to set up such a project in a post-conflict zone, and extremely challenging. Even more so because this project is the only one of its kind in the region, so we don't have a model to refer to.'
The system runs from the Calueque Dam in Southern Angola to the northern Namibian business hub of Oshakati and then back up into Angola again, all the way to the town of Ondjiva.
Drawing its water from the Cunene River in Angola, it is an essential lifeline for the arid border area and supplies water for farming, some industry and domestic use for over a million people.
The water supply on the Angolan side of the border still bears the scars of a devastating civil war and a colonial past.
'Under the Portuguese occupation, holes of 50 by 60 metres were dug to capture floodwater. These so-called chimpacas are still the main water source for the population,' says Thomas Kellner, technical advisor of GIZ (German International Cooperation), which will help local engineers with the overhaul.
But these pools are far from safe.
'Cattle drink from the chimpacas, but 25 metres further you see people washing themselves and doing their laundry, while at the other side people are drawing water for drinking. The water typically has a brown-reddish colour, but several months after the rainy season it will turn green, because it is filled with algae.'
This part of Angola has no piped water, no treatment plants and no sewage systems. While the levels of water-borne diseases are not well-documented, experts stress that child mortality is far above the African average.
In the area's few towns, the situation is not much better, says Kellner. 'A person with a borehole will make water his business. He drives around in a bowser and sells it for as much as $20 per cubic metre.'
In some areas the local authorities exploit well fields - a collection of boreholes - from which they pump water into public tanks.
But many of the boreholes are old and dilapidated. Angola has embarked on a programme called 'Water for Everyone', that will see the rehabilitation of 524 boreholes in Cunene province and the drilling of 600 new ones.
In Namibia the water from Calueque runs through an open canal for 150 kilometres from the Angolan border to Oshakati, where it is treated and pumped through a network to all major communities between Oshakati and Oshikango border post. The canal is the only fresh water supply for over 700,000 people and is often damaged by floods and illegal off-take.
Many people along the canal use the water for household purposes or to irrigate their fields,' explains water management expert Andreas Shilomboleni who runs a Global Environmental Facility -funded project that helps farmers in the area adapt to climate change.
'But currently the canal is open. That means that the further from the source you get, the higher the amount of total dissolved solids, basically meaning the water becomes dirtier.'
The course followed by the two-metre wide, concrete-lined ditch is not ideal.
'In Namibia the canal is not perpendicular to the flow of the water in the rainy season. Flood waters cause damage to the canal resulting in maintenance issues,' says Shilomboleni. The canal rapidly fills with sediment as floodwaters cross it.'
Along the length of the canal, people have also grown accustomed to illegally drawing water for domestic use and for irrigation.
These are among the many challenges the KTWSP will have to take into consideration when embarking on a complete overhaul of water infrastructure in the border area.
The project will see substantial repairs to infrastructure at the dam and the pipeline, upgrading of the power supply to the motors that pump the water southwards and refurbishing of the pumps itself. Extra pipelines will be built to supply Ondjiva with fresh water and new power lines have to erected over many hundreds of kilometres to feed new pump installations.
'About 300,000 people in Southern Angola will now for the first time have access to safe and clean drinking water,' says Kellner.
A final step will be replacing the open canal in Namibia with a pipeline. A feasibility study into this project - which Kellner estimates will cost more than 100 million dollars - will likely commence later this year.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service