OVERVIEW
Water Innovative solutions to water scarcity are being pursued.
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outh Africa is a water-scarce country and the recent drought has served to concentrate the minds of government, the private sector and farmers about the need to preserve and protect the country's water sources. Purification, desalination, water-leakage management and wastewater treatment are some of the issues facing South Africans, and experienced international companies are showing an interest in the country. The governments of South Africa and Denmark have a Strategic Sector Co-operation, which was signed at the annual Water Institute of South Africa (WISA) conference in Durban in May 2016. Denmark is a world leader in water management and the themes underpinning the agreement are groundwater management, urban water services and water efficiency in industries. The national Department of Water and Sanitation (DWAS) has said that demand for water will outstrip supply in 2018. It has also put a figure to what needs to be spent on water infrastructure and demand management in the years to 2022 – R573-billion. Water boards are responsible for provision of water services to urban areas. One of the biggest, Rand Water, will have spent more than R17-billion by 2010 in upgrading its infrastructure. The utility reports that demand has been growing at nearly 5% every year. According to Water Wheel magazine, 37% of water delivered to the nation's municipalities is lost. Government plans to arrest this trend (which costs the country R7-billion every year) include a training programme for plumbers and artisans to fix taps in communities. The first group of 3 000 trainees was recruited in 2015. Among the methods used by the firm WSP to improve water usage are water audits and measurers. These strategies have been successfully implemented at a reservoir controlled by the City of Cape Town, a borehole scheme in the Northern Cape and for private clients like Illovo, the large sugar producer in KwaZulu-Natal. Innovative thinking has been required to tackle the problem of acid mine drainage (AMD). Old mines (whose owners have long gone) pollute the water supply, further reducing the amount of available clean water. National government has committed to spend R600-million on an annual basis on a system that will treat this water. In the 1950s, the Orange River Project delivered water from the SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS 2017
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SECTOR INSIGHT International companies are investigating business opportunities related to South Africa's water-related problems. Orange River to citrus farmers in the far-away Eastern Cape. In a mostly dry country such as South Africa, this kind of transfer scheme is the norm. The country has several good river systems but they are not all ideally situated. So 80% of Gauteng Province’s water is imported, mostly from the Vaal River, which is supplemented by complex transfers from the Thukela River and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. The Vaal basin, which serves the most populated and industrialised part of the country including Johannesburg, receives water from seven inter-basin transfer schemes. Usage has to be reduced in all sectors. The mining and energy sectors are very thirsty, and individual South Africans themselves are apparently thirstier than the average global citizen (consuming 235 litres per day per person, compared with the global average of 177 l/d per person).