Access to water and sanitation remains a full priority for Sub-Saharan Africa as 330 million people lack access to clean water and 565 million to sanitation facilities. During his stay in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, at the Water Storage and Hydropower Development for Africa conference, Ben Braga, President of the World Water Council with Adama Nombre, Governor of the World Water Council and President of the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), met HE Mamounata Belem Ouedraogo, Minister of Water Resources of Burkina Faso.

Water and Energy are fundamental to poverty reduction and economic transformation on the African continent. This week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, experts and policy makers met at the Conference Centre of the African Union to discuss the future of water storage and hydropower development.

During the first meeting of the OECD Water Governance Initiative - held this week in Paris, France - the Vice-President of the Council, Dogan Altinbilek congratulated the organizers. “It is through initiatives like this one that we will be able to convince decision makers at the highest level of the importance of taking action to improve water-related governance,” he said in his opening speech.

Prior to the Special Thematic Session on Water and Disasters at the UN on 6 March, the Chief of Engineers at U.S Army Corps of Engineers (US ACE), Thomas P. Bostick, invited the President of the World Water Council, Ben Braga, to take part in an inspection of storm damaged areas in New York City. Hurricane Sandy, which struck the city in 2012, has been described as a ‘once in a generation’ storm causing death and destruction across the Caribbean region and the eastern seaboard of the United States.