Climate Crisis Must Not be a Pretext for Water Privatisation, Activists Warn African Governments

 

Civil society groups, academics, and international experts have warned African governments and global financiers against using the climate crisis as a pretext for water privatisation, saying such moves would deepen inequality and endanger access to a basic human right.

The warning came at the opening of the 5th Africa Week of Action Against Water Privatisation in Lagos, organised by the Our Water, Our Right Africa Coalition (OWORAC) in partnership with the Africa Make BIG Pollutters Pay (MBPP) Coalition at the head office of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, CAPPA, in Lagos, Nigeria.

OWORAC is a network of grassroots movements, trade unions, and civil society organisations active in more than 15 African countries.

The week-long campaign, themed “Public Water for Climate Resilience,” brings together activists from across Africa and partners from the United States, and Europe to call for public control of water systems in the face of growing privatisation pressures.

The Programme Officer for Water Campaigns at CAPPA, Sefa Ikpa, who read the coalition’s statement, said multinational corporations and financial institutions were “turning the climate emergency into a business opportunity” by pushing governments to privatise essential water systems.

“The climate crisis must not be turned into a project for water privatisation,” Ikpa said. 

“At a time when we need stronger, publicly governed systems to guarantee universal access, we are seeing growing pressure to hand control of this vital resource to profit-driven corporations.”

The coalition warned that projects such as large-scale desalination plants being promoted as climate-proof solutions were not only expensive but also destructive to marine ecosystems and unaffordable for ordinary citizens. 

It cited the example of Morocco’s 35-year water concession to Veolia, a French multinational, noting that similar privatisation schemes elsewhere have led to steep tariff hikes and service failures.

According to OWORAC, privatisation undermines climate resilience and social equity, as private operators tend to neglect rural and low-income communities considered unprofitable. Instead, the coalition called for increased public financing, community-led water governance, and investment in renewable energy to ensure sustainable and equitable water access.

“Climate resilience cannot be built on the transfer of public goods into private hands,” Ikpa said. “Water is a human right, not a commodity. Governments must protect it as a public trust, not surrender it to corporate control.”

In his welcome remarks, the Executive Director of CAPPA, Akinbode Oluwafemi, said access to water must not be turned into a business opportunity for profit-driven corporations.

“To privatise water in an era of climate emergency is to compound vulnerability and deny people their basic right to life,” he said, urging governments to invest in transparent, publicly managed water systems.

Oluwafemi said the partnership between African and Latin American movements this year underscores the link between water justice and climate justice, both rooted in the struggle for democratic control of essential services.

He criticised international financial institutions and multinational corporations for promoting water privatisation under the guise of reform and efficiency.

“While nature cries for justice in the face of climate crisis, capital sees opportunity,” he said. “Selling back to us the very water that belongs to the people cannot be the solution.”

In a virtual address, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, cautioned that governments must not allow the climate crisis to justify water privatisation.

“The climate crisis must not become a project for water privatisation,” he said. “Corporations are promoting the idea that governments lack funds to address water challenges, while seeking public guarantees to protect private profits. This logic is perverse.”

Arrojo-Agudo, who will present his report on Democratic Water Governance as a Common Good to the UN General Assembly this week, argued that privatisation and public-private partnerships undermine democracy and exclude vulnerable communities.

“If we can afford an arms race, we can afford to guarantee human rights,” he added, calling for public financing and community-led water governance.

Also speaking, the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos, Professor Adelaja Odukoya, linked water privatisation to growing inequality, describing it as a form of “disaster capitalism” that profits from human suffering.

“Privatisation is wired to produce poverty and exploitation,” he said. “Even in Britain, where it began, people are now calling for renationalisation after decades of failure.”

Prof Odukoya said the climate crisis is not merely an environmental issue but a political one driven by global systems of exploitation.

“Privatisation says if you cannot pay for water, you perish. But we say water is life,  it is a right, not a privilege,” he declared.

Lending a continental perspective, Leonard Shang-Quartey, Coordinator of the Africa Water Justice Network, warned that water privatisation is normalising scarcity and exclusion across Africa.

“In many parts of Ghana, young people no longer remember when water used to flow from taps,” he said. “Now, people depend on tankers and boreholes. This is what privatisation does, it alienates the people from a public good.”

Shang-Quartey cited data from the World Health Organization and UNICEF showing that the number of Africans without access to safe water rose from 353 million in 2000 to 411 million in 2020, blaming the setback partly on privatisation policies promoted by international lenders.

From Boston, Neil Gupta, Water Campaign Director at Corporate Accountability International, accused northern governments and financial institutions of enabling a “corporate takeover” of water in the global South.

“Public-private partnerships are privatisation by another name,” he said. “Short-term corporate profit cannot guide long-term climate adaptation.”

On the domestic front, Zikorah Ibeh, Assistant Executive Director of CAPPA, called on the Lagos State Government to suspend all plans to privatise the state’s water systems through public-private partnerships.

“Privatisation by any name, whether you call it PPP or concession, still means handing over public systems to profit-driven actors,” she said, urging the state to make its water agreements public and invest instead in transparent, democratically managed infrastructure.

Ibeh commended Lagos for its recent wetland preservation efforts but challenged it to show the same resolve in reviving public water supply.

“If Lagos can preserve wetlands to build climate resilience, it can also fix its public water systems. The problem is not capacity, it is political will,” she said.

Other participants at the event, including Fatou Diouf of the Senegal Water Justice Network called Africa’s situation, Ndivile Mokoena of the Gender CC, Women for Climate Justice, South Africa and Geoffrey Ocansey from Ghana, reaffirmed that water is not a commodity but a human right, and warned that no just climate transition is possible if essential resources remain under corporate control.