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The Minister of Water and Sanitation, Ms Nomvula Mokonyane, has called for the strengthening of partnership in accelerating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through financing water security.

Minister Mokonyane was speaking as one the World Water Week Conference panelists on “Accelerating SDGs delivery through financing water resources”, on 29 August 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Minister Mokonyane said the South African government has prioritised institutional arrangements, governance and partnership, emphasising that this was at the heart of building capacity and embracing innovation, mobilisation of resources. She said South African was making issues around implementation, performance monitoring and evaluation one of its focal points.

“Truth be told many of us who are in the water sector are very obsessed with operation within our space and assuming other people cannot lead. What we have been able to do is to carry our objective but allow others to lead. One of the things that have turned around in South Africa in mega projects is to make the Minister of Finance to lead the investment crusade for mega water infrastructure,” Minister Mokonyane.
She said the Minister of Finance has the responsibility of creating certainty and in the best country, stressing that it was this that is required in terms of mobilising resources.

Minister Mokonyane said: “Allow others to take the lead and bring as many parties as possible and finally take the ultimate responsibility for the realisation of the objectives.”

She said one of the immediate issues in South African was to move beyond the use of one source of water and take advantage of other components. These include the use of desalination, particularly in the coastal provinces.

In order to deal with this problem, it would have taken a projected R2 billion but through the partnership the price tag was under R200 million within a period of three months.

“We have had an intervention that initially everybody projected would take not less than six years but with our partnership with the private sector, we have been able to put a bankable project with the capacity to implement and also the ability to deliver within the period of three to four months”, Minister Mokonyane said.

Issued by the Department of Water and Sanitation