(Bloomberg) — South Africa’s biggest companies are exploring widening a partnership with the government to help resolve a water crisis that’s threatening to leave the nation’s commercial hub dry.
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Business for South Africa — which is already working with the government to boost energy production, fix a broken logistics system and tackle one of the world’s highest crime rates – has held talks with President Cyril Ramaphosa over helping with the issue.
The offer of assistance comes as Africa’s most industrialized economy wrestles with a worsening water crisis mainly attributable to decades of underinvestment and poor maintenance. Earlier this month Rand Water, Africa’s biggest bulk water supplier, said Gauteng province, the nation’s commercial hub in which almost 16 million people live could run out of water unless consumption wasn’t immediately curbed.
“There is a particular challenge in Gauteng,” said Martin Kingston, chairman of the steering committee of the business grouping, known as B4SA, said in an interview on Friday. “There is significant scope for the private sector to provide assistance with operation and maintenance and to mobilize capital for incremental investment in infrastructure.”
B4SA, which the chief executive officers of more than 140 major companies have signed up to support, plans to initially pool information about what the private sector is doing in the water industry and then seek to assist the government. A decision on how the partnership may proceed will be made in coming months, he said.
“With the correct structural reform and an appropriate regulatory environment as a backdrop” private companies will invest in water, he said.
South Africa is the 22nd-most water-stressed nation in the world, sandwiched between the largely desert nations of Namibia and Iraq, according to an assessment by the World Resources Institute. The country uses more than 80% of its renewable water resources every year, the nonprofit research company said.
Gauteng — which is the site of South Africa’s biggest city Johannesburg and its capital Pretoria — is plagued by aging and poorly maintained water infrastructure.
Johannesburg alone loses 44% of its water to leaks and theft and has a 26.9 billion rand ($1.5 billion) maintenance and water infrastructure backlog.
B4SA’s partnership with the government has already led to changes to legislation that’s fostered a boom in the building of privately owned power plants, easing years of recurrent power outages. A framework that will allow more private participation in running the country’s ports and freight rail network has also been put in place.
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