CAPPA Renews Call Against Water Privatisation

CAPPA Executive Director, Akinbode Oluwafemi

The Executive Director of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), Mr. Akinbode Oluwafemi, has reiterated that access to clean and safe water is a fundamental human right that must not be handed over to profit-driven corporations.

Oluwafemi stated this on Monday while declaring open the 5th Africa Week of Action Against Water Privatisation in Lagos. 

The annual event, convened by the Our Water, Our Rights African Coalition (OWORAC), brings together grassroots movements, labour unions, and civil society organisations across the continent to campaign for public control of water resources.

This year’s edition, themed “Public Water for Climate Resilience,” is being held in partnership with the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay Coalition, a continent-wide network of organisations advocating for climate justice and corporate accountability for environmental damage.

According to Oluwafemi, the partnership underscores the link between water justice and climate justice, stressing that water privatisation in the midst of climate-induced disasters would “compound vulnerability and institutionalise inequality.”

“For the first time in our movement’s history, this week of action brings together African and Latin American coalitions under a shared demand for climate and water justice,” he said. “To privatise water in an era of escalating climate shocks is to deepen inequality and deny people their basic right to life.”

The CAPPA director welcomed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, Mr. Pedro Arrojo Agudo, who joined the event virtually, describing his participation as a reflection of the global dimension of the struggle.

“The fight for equitable, publicly governed water systems is not confined to any geography,” Oluwafemi said. “It is a universal human rights demand rooted in the moral premise that life itself cannot be commodified.”

He noted that despite the United Nations General Assembly’s 2010 resolution affirming access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right, the right remains under threat in many African countries due to government failure and growing corporate influence.

“At a time when we need stronger, publicly accountable systems to guarantee universal access, we are seeing pressure to privatise our water systems and hand control of this essential resource to profit-seeking corporations,” he said. “While nature cries for justice in the face of climate emergency, capital sees opportunity.”

Oluwafemi warned that multinational corporations were marketing privatisation models such as desalination under the guise of climate solutions, adding that “selling back to us the very water that belongs to the people” was unacceptable.

He called on African governments to strengthen public water systems, ensure transparent governance, and resist external pressures to commercialise water.

“The resistance against the commodification of water is part of a broader continental affirmation that public services, when transparently managed and democratically governed, form the foundation of social justice and climate resilience,” he stated.

Oluwafemi thanked CAPPA’s global partners, including Corporate Accountability International and representatives of the United Nations, for their solidarity.

“As we begin this week of action, let us carry forward the collective understanding that defending public water is, in essence, defending life itself,” he said.