The share of investments in the water sector in SSA is relatively small at 9.7% compared to other infrastructure sectoral financing according to the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (2016). The region’s water access flounders at 40% (World Bank 2017). Whereas industrial wastewater is aiding the deterioration in water quality, resulting in reduced biodiversity in rivers, lakes and wetlands by about one-third in the region, finds a UN brief on Water Management (2017). This overall, complicates Africa’s development efforts to achieve both industrialization and sustainability.
Primarily, a combination of water technologies and investments can implicitly unlock much of Africa’s stagnant efforts, largely driven by the private sector. However, something was missing. At africon we studied what additional forces could attract more technology providers to enter the market. Our findings show that countries equipped with engineering capacity and environmental legislation had a favorable environment for water technologies. Added to that, water scarcity coupled with industrial activity and investment trends were stark signals of strong market demand for water solutions.
As a result of our market analysis, the top 5 countries were: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia.