{"id":661,"date":"2012-05-15T14:51:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T14:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/?p=661"},"modified":"2012-05-15T14:51:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T14:51:11","slug":"the-4th-africa-water-week-comes-to-cairo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/2012\/05\/the-4th-africa-water-week-comes-to-cairo.html","title":{"rendered":"The 4th Africa Water Week comes to Cairo"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post by Ola Al-Ghazawy, a freelancer working with <\/em>Nature Middle East.<\/p>\n

Some 24 ministers from across Africa gathered yesterday in Cairo, Egypt, for the 4th<\/sup> Africa Water Week (AWW4). Representatives from all countries were present, including the newest African state South Sudan, to discuss the challenge of securing water for the continent\u2019s increasing population.<\/p>\n

Topics discussed from the first day ranged from water and sanitation for development and the role of the private sector in investment to issues of governance and financing.<\/p>\n

Kicking off the event, Egyptian prime minister Kamal Al-Ganzoury opened with a speech about the importance of water for the development of all African states. He stressed the importance of collaboration between Africa states on water and sanitation, as the whole continent is facing a myriad of challenges and most of them are in danger of water scarcity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that the development road will extend from Cairo to Johannesburg and from Addis Ababa to Accra as soon as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During the event of today, the African Minister\u2019s Council on Water (AMCOW) celebrated its 10th<\/sup> anniversary. South Africa handed Egypt the presidency of the council for the coming 2 years.<\/p>\n

Bai-Mass Taal, executive secretary of the African Minister\u2019s Council on Water (AMCOW), said that the top priority for AMCOW now is to engage policymakers with the water issues facing their countries. \u201cAMCOW has transformed from being just an idea to a development mechanism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started AMCOW all of the members said enough talking, we have to start acting,\u201d said Taal. He pointed that water issues could touch on many other aspects of life. \u201cMillions of African children do not go to school as they go to fetch water which may be kilometers away from home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panel discussions will continue throughout the week until Friday with government representatives, practitioners, members of the private sector and financiers coming together to address the continent\u2019s urgent problem.<\/p>\n

Strangely, the programme seemed to be rather light on the need for scientific research with weak representation of scientists in the meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some 24 ministers from across Africa gathered yesterday in Cairo, Egypt, for the 4th Africa Water Week (AWW4). Representatives from all countries were present, including the newest African state South Sudan, to discuss the challenge of securing water for the continent\u2019s increasing population.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}