Michel Camdessus

Mr. Michel Camdessus, the International Monetary Fund’s former Managing Director, focused on: Improving Access for African Rural Areas to Water and Sanitation. He reflected on various efforts made to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing, by half, the over two billion people who lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

He perceived MDG challenges and water provision as intertwined, arguing that since water-related issues account for a third of the MDGs, the latter would have greater prospects of being achieved if water and sanitation objectives were fulfilled.

He maintained that the age-old vision of water provision for all Africans could be realized if current centralized water management systems were reversed. He pointed out that in order to address the challenge of making water available to those who need it, it was necessary to have an optimally decentralized distribution.

He proposed financial management mechanisms which could reconcile the need for water supply decentralization with efficiency in tariff charges and cost recovery.