Politics of Privatisation

This week I will be looking at the politics of privatising water and whether it can be a viable alternative to mismanaged state water supplies.

Background

The privatisation of water supplies in Africa began arguably as ‘ideological enthusiasm driven by State Failure in the Washington Consensus Era’ (Pierce, 2015). It can be viewed as a neoliberal solution to failed government attempts to provide clean and safe water to populations. Privatisation attempts were furthered spurred on by institutions such as the World Bank and IMF who support market-approaches and include privatisation of water supplies as conditionalities to loans. ‘IMF loan agreements in 12 countries included conditions imposing water privatization or full cost recovery’ (Ratical, 2015), however arguably this makes water less accessible and affordable for poorer communities.

However it is important to note that privatisation ‘encompasses a spectrum of contractual agreements’ (Bayliss, 2003) and interventions vary between countries. This can include small-scale management by private sector organisations all the way to full ownership transfer of water provision.

                                                                                                   

Water Privatisation Protests in Lagos, Nigeria

Source - http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Civil-society-protest-against-water-privatisation-March-2015-credit-Corporate-Accountability-International-p3.jpg

         

Successes

Cote d’Ivoire’s water privatisation can be seen somewhat as a success story. Privatised in 1960 it was far ahead of many other African countries and a contract was given to French firm SAUR to run the water company ‘SODECI’. Between 1960-87 water was high quality and there were low levels of unaccounted for water (Bayliss, 2003). Cote d’Ivoire highlights a hybrid system, where whilst SODECI supply water – producing, distributing, managing, maintenance etc., the state still own the network, provide financing for investment and sets the tariffs.

In 1987 the contract was re-negotiated and the state managed to reduce the fees paid to SODECI by 20% by threatening to allow other companies to bid for the contract (ibid). This highlights the benefit of competition within privately operated water provision in reducing costs, however also suggests that SODECI would have been receiving considerable profits. Thus it can be difficult to decide whether privatisation has really benefitted Cote d’Ivoire, certainly there is room for improvements and less profit. In spite of this the connection rate has increased (38 towns in 1974 to 411 in 1966), however water quality has declined since 2002 (ibid).

Interestingly, SAUR who manage Cote d’Ivoire’s water also manage water supplies in Guinea, Central African Republic, Senegal, Mali and parts of South Africa. Due to this large multinational water companies have been accused of accruing monopolies over water supply in Africa in a ‘neo-colonial’ manner (Vidal, 2015).

A satirical cartoon about water privatisation

Source - http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/government    

Failures

Conversely, water provision on the Dolphin Coast, South Africa, arguably highlights a case study of mismanagement and the negative impacts of privatisation. In 1999 the water concession was given to SIZA water company (majority owned by SAUR) (McDonald, 2002). Water plays an important role in South Africa as it was entrenched in their constitution that all private companies must provide at least 25 litres of water per day to every resident (Megaloudi, 2013). This stemmed from the 2000-2002 cholera outbreaks in Johannesburg where slum residents couldn’t afford increased bills and thus were disconnected from supplies and forced to drink contaminated water. This resulted in illness for around 100,000 people and the deaths of 100 (ibid). Thus in 2001, the Dolphin Coast contract was re-negotiated to include the free-water policy.

However the movement from subsidies to cost recovery models of water provision had negative implications for much of the Dolphin Coast’s poor. The notion of cost recovery suggests that everybody must pay something to access water. In the Dolphin Coast pre-payment systems were implemented as well as connection fees to access the network (McDonald, 2002). However high poverty and unemployment rates meant that many couldn’t afford these and were thus cut off for non-payment. This resulted in around 90% of residents in some areas accessing water from elsewhere (ICJJ, 2016) – often unsafe water supplies. Critiques of this cost-recovery model are as follows

‘It Makes perfect sense in equitable society, but excludes poor from access to a basic commodity’ Mike Muller, Director General of Government Water Department

"The cost recovery program sounds good, but…it forced people to go back to the original sources of water, polluted streams and rivers and the like.” David Hemson of South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council (McDonald, 2002)

McDonald (7) highlights that cost recovery in fact undermined its own economic rationale, for example the cholera outbreak in 2000 ended up costing far more in medical bills and emergency water supplies than simply providing free water would have. Thus clearly, despite well-intentioned to provide increased funds for re-investment this private experiment failed. Furthermore it is estimated that around 43,000 people die every year in South Africa – mostly poor black children under 5 – from diarrhoeal diseases (Moodley, 2000). This statistic highlights that its not just an argument of private vs. public and economics, but the realities of water supply are life vs. death.

This example raises a lot of moral questions and I feel David McDonald (2002) sums up the water as a commodity vs. water as a human right debate well stating

‘Just because someone can afford to pay the cost of filling their swimming pool or washing their cars every day, should they have the right to do so when others are struggling to survive with no water at all?’

Conclusion

Clearly then, water privatisation success is context-dependent. Whilst mainly improving things in Cote d’Ivoire, it had drastic and devastating impacts within South Africa. I feel that the whole private vs. public debate can mask the true implications of water provision which for many people is life or death, exemplified by the cholera outbreaks in south Africa.

List of References

Bayliss, K. (2003) ‘Utility privatisation in Sub-Saharan Africa: A case study of water’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 41(4), pp. 507–531.

ICIJ (2016) Metered to death. Available at: https://www.icij.org/project/water-barons/metered-death (Accessed: 28 December 2016).

McDonald, D. (2002) ‘No money no Service’, Sustaining Livelihoods, 28(2), pp. 16–20.

Megaloudi, F. (2013) ‘When water is for sale: What water Privatisation really means’, Huffington Post, 4 June. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/fragkiska-megaloudi/water-privatisation-what-it-really-means_b_3381233.html (Accessed: 28 December 2016).

Moodley, S. (2000) Investigating Total Economic Burden: South Africa’s Diarrhoeal Disease Burden in 1995 (Johannesburg: Group for Environmental Monitoring, 2000)

Pierce, G. (2015) ‘Beyond the Strategic Retreat? Explaining Urban Water Privatization's Shallow Expansion in Low- and Middle-income Countries’ Journal of Planning Literature 30(2) 119-131.

Ratical (2015) IMF forces water privatization on poor countries. Available at: https://ratical.org/co-globalize/waterIMF.html#table (Accessed: 28 December 2016).

Vidal, J. (2015) Water privatisation: A worldwide failure? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/30/water-privatisation-worldwide-failure-lagos-world-bank (Accessed: 28 December 2016).

Representations of Water in Africa

This week’s blog post is somewhat different to my others which were well thought through and planned. This blog post stems from a growing frustration with the representations of ‘Africa’ within discourses of Water in Africa. This year I have taken a module called ‘International Development and Public Policy’ where we’ve looked in depth at representations of development and how they can be harmful for the very people they aim to help. This has provided me with a far more critical lens when engaging in development discourses.

Frequently I’ve been looking at news sites or NGO’s which represent water in Africa in such a negative manner – as a continent of poverty and despair. I’ve found water charities to be particularly guilty of using these representations of ‘poverty porn’ in order to gain sympathy and donations. This blog post aims to look at some of the main criticisms that I’ve generated including ‘poverty-porn’ in water and development, the ‘white saviour complex’, viewing Africa as a country and the changing representations of poverty and water access. Using post-colonial and post-development critiques is useful in this context to enlighten underlying power dynamics within ‘development.

Poverty Porn

Poverty porn is regarded as images used by charities to fundraise for projects in the developing world; these representations often frame ‘Africans’ as helpless, pitiful, starving and in need of western interventions. Jorgen Lissner explains the problems with these portrayals

‘The starving child image is seen as unethical, because it comes dangerously close to being pornographic…it exhibits the human body and soul in all its nakedness, without any respect for the person involved.’ (Lissner, 1981)

I agree with Lissner’s argument and feel that many subjects wouldn’t agree with their representations as helpless and the lack of respect provided to them, in fact I’m sure many subjects may not even have an awareness of how their representation would be used. However many NGO’s have defended the use of such imagery as they are highlighting the difficult truths that are apparent in the world. Yet the means don’t justify the ends of raising money in the case of poverty porn and as Schaffer highlights, ‘it leads to donations, but not activism’ (Schaffer, 2016). These charities construct a continent of pity and despair in order to guilt-trip westerners into donating; this neither provides an accurate representation of Africa, or elucidates to the causes of poverty or lack of water access, it merely provides a quick-fix for us to relieve our guilt.

A photo from Aqua-Aid's blog 'A continent of thirsty children'
Source - http://aquaidwatercoolers.co.uk/a-continent-of-thirsty-children

This notion is exemplified by Aqua-Aid, a water NGO, who utilise this kind of poverty-porn imagery in one of their blogs explaining about ‘a continent of thirsty children’ (AquaAid, 2012). Furthermore this blog promotes a single story of Africa; a whole ‘continent of thirsty children’ grossly misrepresents Africa and creates an imagination of a dry, barren, pitiful continent. Having spent time in Ghana, I have seen many children grow up with not only access to safe water, but swimming pools – certainly not ‘thirsty’. Chimanda Adichie suggests that providing a ‘single story’ of Africa robs people of dignity and makes recognition of African’s as equals difficult (Adichie, 2009). Whilst NGO’s such as Aqua-Aid mean well, their misrepresentations can foster our view of Africa through a lense of difference; the west has, but Africa has not.

White Saviour Complex

A further frustration of mine stemming from water-provision NGO’s is their perpetuation of the White Saviour Complex. This is the idea that it is us, in the west, that will ‘save Africa from poverty’ and that without us they are helpless. This notion greets us everyday in TV and online adverts which suggest that our donations, or purchases of ‘wells for Africa’ will cure the continent’s worries.

This idea is exemplified by Water.org;

‘Give to Water.org, and help turn a life of poverty into a life of possibility for millions of families.’ (Water.Org, 2016).

Here they suggest that by simply donating a few pounds we can transform a families lives, ignoring any sort of agency or role that that family would have in improving their lives.

Water is Life's photo highlighting the 'White Saviour Complex'
Source - http://waterislife.com/donate

This photo from waterislife.com (Water is Life, 2016) highlights the white saviour complex perfectly; a white male handing out ‘waterislife filters’ to a community of women in Africa, he even has ‘Saves’ tattooed on his arm which begs belief. The outstretched arms of many women to collect the filter highlights their desperate need; representing the community as if they’ve all been sat there just waiting for this NGO to provide help.

These images and ideas reinforce binaries of ‘active’ western saviours vs. passive African recipients and fosters a neo-colonial idea of western superiority (Sachs, 2010). Furthermore I feel that the White Saviour Complex is lazy in its understanding of poverty and presumptions that a simple donation will provide water or solve poverty. It ignores structural injustices within the world – what about years of colonialism that created underdevelopment within Africa (Escobar, 1995)? What about the privatisation of water supplies which are now owned by western corporations such as SAUR in Ivory Coast, Guinea and Senegal to name a few; we should be questioning these relationships rather than just blindly donating a few pounds. Water charities can encourage a white saviour complex view by providing us with quick fixes that make us feel good, but I feel that we need to consider the underlying problems of water access much further.

Movement towards empowering representations

However, a rising literature of critique is helping to transform the charity industry, it’s becoming increasingly unacceptable to frame subjects in the manner of ‘poverty porn’. 

Looking at multiple water charity websites I’ve found a unexpected lack of poverty porn and have been pleasantly surprised to see this. Most photos portray subjects looking happy to be receiving water or highlight how access to water has improved lives; this is exemplified by the AidforAfrica picture.

Aid For Africa's positive representation of subjects
Source - http://www.aidforafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/charity-water-photo1.jpg

WaterAid’s ‘Big Pipe Project’ further provides a good example of representing poverty in water projects (WaterAid, 2015). The local community has documented the project describing challenges and successes and been given the freedom to curate the blog with their own photographs. This demonstrates how it is the community involved in the water project that has transformed their lives, rather than solely WaterAid or western donors

Conclusions

Whilst this blog has been critical of charities and NGO’s, I do believe that much of the work they do makes a huge difference and don’t want to undermine this. However I feel that it must be ensured that poverty porn isn’t used to encourage donations. Representations are incredibly important and change the way the west, many of whom haven’t visited Africa, think about the continent. You can’t portray a whole continent as people sat around drinking dirty water waiting for a western NGO to save them; this is inaccurate, unfair and dangerous.  Furthermore the creation of a single story and quick fix to Africa’s water problems undermines efforts to understand the root causes of poverty or lack of water access. NGO’s and charities have certainly improved in their representations and I certainly hope that this is maintained, and constantly improved on.

List of References

Adichie, C.N. (2009) The danger of a single story. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

AquaAid (2012) A continent of thirsty children. Available at: http://aquaidwatercoolers.co.uk/a-continent-of-thirsty-children (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, NJ, United States: Princeton University Press.

Lissner, J. (1981) Merchants of misery. Available at: https://newint.org/features/1981/06/01/merchants-of-misery/ (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Sachs, W. (2010) The development dictionary a guide to knowledge as power. 2nd edn. London: Zed Books.

Schaffer, J. (2016) Poverty Porn - Do the means justify the ends? Available at: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/06/10/poverty-porn-do-the-means-justify-the-ends/ (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Water is Life (2016) Water is Life. Available at: http://waterislife.com/donate (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Water. Org (2016) Water.Org Safe water & sanitation Charity. Available at: http://www.water.org (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

WaterAid (2015) Big Pipe Project. Available at: http://www.bigpipeproject.wateraid.org (Accessed: 23 December 2016).