Vicky Cann

'Young plants need rain, businesses need investment. Our old industries are like dry crops and privatisation brings the rain. When the harvest comes, there is plenty for everyone.'

Not exactly catchy is it? When you learn that this is a pop song used by the Tanzanian authorities to promote water privatisation to a sceptical public, no doubt you will raise your eyebrows. When you find out this song was produced by Adam Smith International, a London-based consultancy firm, and paid for with £270,000 of UK aid money, you will start to feel angry. When you discover that, in late May, the water privatisation project that was supposed to 'bring the rain' in Tanzania collapsed and the British company, BiWater, which was part-running the water system in Dar es Salaam, has been kicked out, you may fall off your chair!

This is the sorry saga of a failed water privatisation which has the sticky hands of the UK government and UK plc all over it. Since 1998, the UK government has spent over £9.5million, taken from the aid budget, promoting privatisation in Tanzania. Adam Smith International has received over £1.3million from the World Bank to do the same. Severn Trent Water International were the primary advisers to the Tanzanian government on the water privatisation. BiWater, a Dorking-based company, which together with German company Gauff Ingenieure has a 51% stake in the failed water provider in Dar, was given the contract as the only company left standing in the bidding process. To top it all, the UK government’s Export Credit Guarantee Department has insured BiWater to the tune of £2million, in case of contract cancellation!

Unfortunately, this is a common story when it comes to water privatisation projects in developing countries. The World Development Movement’s new campaign ‘Dirty Aid, Dirty Water’ lists countless examples of British consultancy companies and British water utility companies benefiting from UK aid money by pushing water privatisation in developing countries, which has time and time again proved to be a failed solution to the global water crisis. From Bolivia and Argentina to the Philippines and South Africa, local communities are resisting the privatisation of their water supplies and the inevitable price rises that follow.

With regards to water and sanitation the UK government says, 'We need to focus on what works, rather than on ideological debates,' and claims that it gives money to water privatisation projects when the developing country itself decides that it wants to privatise the water system. However, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund continue to pressurise developing countries to implement trade liberalisation policies like water privatisation in order to qualify for debt relief and further aid, and the UK government follows this lead. By using ‘technical assistance’, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) can provide consultancy ‘advice’ on water privatisation to poor countries. By channelling huge amounts of aid through the World Bank, including into mechanisms that only fund private sector initiatives, DfID continues to waste precious aid money on private sector water projects.

What is so ludicrous about this position is that the evidence of failure from around the world is stark. The many cases of failed water privatisations can be contrasted with the many stories of successful public sector reform of water provision which have extended access to water and sanitation, without breaking the bank. Ninety five per cent of clean water around the world is already supplied by the public sector, so why do we continue to pump aid money into the pockets of British companies to promote a white elephant?