EAST AFRICA: Lake Victoria water project to benefit 1 million

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 7 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - A water and sanitation initiative for Lake Victoria could help improve the lives of an estimated one million people that live along the shores of the East African lake, according to delegates attending the 20th Governing Council of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The project, launched in 2004, is intended to rehabilitate and upgrade water and sanitation facilities for the Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans living in towns that border the lake.

The UN Under-Secretary-General and executive director of UN-HABITAT, Anna Tibaijuka, said on Tuesday that support from the agency's water and sanitation trust fund had encouraged a unique partnership in the region.

According to UN-HABITAT, the project will cost about US $52 million, an average of about $50 per head.

The Kenyan minister for water, Martha Karua, praised the holistic approach of the initiative, which recognised the relationship between development and sustainable environment.

"While rehabilitating the water and sanitation infrastructure, the project will also put emphasis on community capacity building, and also on [the] planning of our settlements for sustainable management of the environment," she said.

The Ugandan minister for water, Maria Mutagamba, said as much as the lake needed preservation, people's lives also needed to be improved: "The vulnerability of our people is on the increase and we must address this."

Speakers at the conference underscored the need to address HIV/AIDS as well - Tibaijuka noted that water shortages contributed to poor nutrition, which increased the vulnerability of people living with HIV to opportunistic infections, resulting in higher mortality rates.

A UN-HABITAT statement issued on Sunday said the agency was working with poor people, governments, and international and civil-society organisations to realise a UN Millennium Development Goal to reduce by half the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

Lake Victoria, one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world, has a surface area of about 69,000 sq km, and is shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. One of the sources of the River Nile, the lake sustains important economic activities for all three countries.

[ENDS]