Challenges and Solutions in the Water and Wastewater Treatment Industry in Africa

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Challenges and Solutions in the Water and Wastewater Treatment Industry in Africa

Construction Review had an exclusive interview with Nick Nicholas, the Application Engineer/Technical Director for Genesis Water Technologies, Inc, a global leader in integrated solutions for drinking water & wastewater treatment.

In this role and previous roles with GWT, Mr. Nicholas has coordinated and led a global team of technical professionals in designing and building custom built water and wastewater treatment system solutions for industrial, commercial, and municipal clients within the USA and across the world.

1. How does Genesis Water see the African Water & Wastewater Treatment market?

The increasing population growth and the expansion of industrial development have led to growing water scarcity across Africa. This combined with deficient drinking water & sanitation services, represents critically important challenges, especially in regions across sub-Saharan Africa.

Grey water and wastewater reclamation is a promising approach to reducing water scarcity in Africa. This process serves as a motivating force for improved sanitation services and the protection of the environment by treating wastewater and redeploying this treated water for the benefit of applications including irrigation, agriculture and other non-potable applications.

Genesis Water Technologies, an innovative US based global water & wastewater engineering Solutions Company, sees the African water treatment market striving closer to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Access to sustainable and safe drinking water and sanitation is very important to meeting millennium challenge development goals. For many countries in Africa, an extensive effort is required in order to meet these millennium development goals.

Current sustainable practices for water & wastewater treatment across Africa are typically insufficient to ensure safe water and basic sanitation. One of the main challenges to address this insufficiency is to develop a structure that can assist in the integration of technological solutions and social impact management efforts to enhance the water education of the citizens of municipalities and private sector clients within Africa as well.

2. Which are the most popular wastewater treatment methods being applied in Africa currently?

Some of the common yet antiquated and inefficient wastewater treatment methods include activated sludge treatment, combined trickling filter plant and stabilization ponds, which are most popular. This is currently being appropriately phased out and replaced over time with more advanced and sustainable technologies including moving bed bioreactor technology (MBBR), specialized electrocoagulation and the utilization of tertiary wastewater filtration with ultraviolet disinfection. All of these technologies are designed, engineered, integrated and supplied Genesis Water Technologies.

The drinking water methods most common in treating predominantly groundwater and to a lesser degree surface water include using some sort of physical /chemical process followed by disinfection using chlorine.

Visit Construction Review Online to read the full interview.

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  1. Construction Review and Nick Nicholas of Genesis Water Technologies are to be commended for aspiring to aspiring to meet the dire needs for water in the African water market.  This is a serious need considering that countries and regions that are economically challenged require very different approaches from their more northerly counterparts that tend to be wealthy. 

    In general terms, the technologies for low income areas have entirely different needs as to what is sustainable and appropriate.  It is unconscionable to insist that they utilize approaches that are more appropriate in countries and regions of wealth.

    Forgive what appears to be a criticism rather than optimism, but in talking about technologies of treating safe drinking water description of the Millennium ​Development ​Goals is outdated and inappropriate.  We need to be aware that since 2015 these objectives have been designated as the Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs.  There is however, some recognition in this posting that given truly sustainable water treatment social engagement will be essential.  Communities need to be engaged in their water needs.

    Social engagement suggests that wherever an expensive technology can be replaced by human centered endeavor and employment, this will indeed be the more sustainable alternative.  For example, where the problem with drinking water is pathogens, the particles of turbidity can often be settled out in advance of treatment, employing local people to do this manually, as it were. 

    Low income countries do not need expensive technologies while the numbers of such projects are bound to be few and far between!  Moreover these may tend to involve such corrupt practices as those of bribery and payola. A far better approach will be to reach greater numbers of beneficiaries while using truly sustainable, human centered technologies!

    Thanks for the posting and aspirations towards getting safe water into low income countries, however the word ‘sustainability’ should not be used when this is not appropriate.  What may be sustainable where there is wealth is likely not to be at all appropriate where there is widespread poverty.  The answers are there and we simply need to seek them out.

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    1. This is true Anthony, that there is a different approach to dealing with more wealthier nations in North Africa versus the low to middle income countries of Sub-saharan Africa. Yes, agreed sustainability should be used where appropriately in context of the situation at hand and the countries at hand. Yes, we needed to evaluate the various approaches to sustainable water & wastewater treatment based on the regional economics broken down into wealthy countries, emerging countries, middle incomes countries and low income countries. Our typical solutions focus tends to be upon the middle income, emerging countries and wealthier countries, although we have worked with some NGO groups in lower income African countries with apparent poverty, keeping an eye on the bribery and payola.