Liberia's President Sirleaf calls for partnership in dealing with access to water

AllAfrica.com via FrontPageAfrica: President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has told a gathering of over six hundred participants at the 2014 Global Water Awards Ceremony in Paris, France that water is an essential source for growth and development and called for sustained partnership to ensure access to clean water globally.

The Liberian leader said governments and investors need a dialogue that will ensure private-public partnership that will ensure the availability and access to water globally, thus promoting investment and enhancing growth.

President Sirleaf said nearly one in ten people lack access to safe water and one in three are without access to basic sanitation - much of this is occurring in the developing world. The President stressed that while 2015, as the end date of the Millennium Development Goals target to reduce by half the proportion of people with access to safe drinking water and
basic sanitation has almost been met, nearly 350 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, about one-third of the continent's population will still be without safe water.

...In Liberia, the President noted where there is plentiful water, the second highest rainfall in the world at more than 200 inches per annum, reflecting an endowment of 43 percent of the rainforest biodiversity of West Africa, until the commencement of recovery in 2003, the majority of Liberian children did not know pipe borne water for drinking, hygiene or sanitation....

The Mesurado River in Liberia, shot by David Stanley, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license