Discover the Lion: Africa H2O

July 29, 2009: On June 10 IBM hosted a workshop named Africa H2O. It was the fourth in a series of seven highly interactive Discover the Lion workshops. In this series STT and NABC offer a tour through the most dynamic economic sectors in Africa. The workshops are part of the STT foresight study on Technology in Africa (www.stt.nl/africa).

Africa H2O focused on the changes in the water sector: Fresh water supply, targeted water use and waste water treatment are key challenges in many African regions. New

infrastructures and new technologies ranging from large scale organic waste water treatment to individual water filters and catalysts provide the opportunity to alleviate the problem.

Presentations

Four short presentations highlighted different aspects of the topic. Menno Holterman of Norit focused on water purification ranging from the individual household level to large scale industrial wastewater treatment applications. Hielke Wolters of Vitens presented so-called Water Operators Partnerships where the ownership of water assets and their management is distributed over the most suitable private and public actors. Fugro's Job Nijman literally took a bird's eye view by explaining the added value of geo-services when tracing resources of potable water.

Working groups

Three working groups were set up. Each group identified opportunities, obstacles and

solutions concerning their issues.