Â鶹APP

Friends and colleagues, I'm pleased to join you for the launch of the 2026 Africa Dialogue Series, convened in partnership between the Â鶹APP and the African Union.

This year's theme, Assuring Sustainable Water Availability and Safe Sanitation Systems to achieve the Goals of Agenda 2063, speaks directly to the future we are working to build. A future of dignity, of resilience, opportunity, and peace for all Africans.

This year's series is not only a conversation about water systems. It is about people, equity, and delivery.

It is about how access to safe water and sanitation can become a lived reality for every community, rural and urban, in fragile contexts and fast-growing economic regions.

Water is life, and sanitation is dignity. Together, they are the foundation for health, education, food security, climate resilience, economic transformation, and human rights.

Yet for too many communities, safe water and sanitation continue to remain out of reach.

The challenge before us is not simply one of supply.

Across much of the continent, water does exist, but access does not.

Too often, the reality of water and security reflects how resources are governed, allocated, managed, and maintained, rather than absolute scarcity alone.

Women and girls know this challenge deeply. Young people know it. Rural communities, informal settlements, and populations affected by conflict and climate shocks know it. When systems fail, they carry the greatest burden in lost time, lost learning, lost health, and lost opportunity.

In many contexts, Africa's water challenge is therefore also a governance challenge. How to make an abundant but unevenly distributed resource accessible to all under fair, transparent, and sustainable conditions?

Addressing this requires moving beyond fragmented service delivery toward a strategic asset management approach. One that treats water as a national and regional asset to be planned, governed, financed, and stewarded over the long term. Such an approach strengthens institutions, improves equity, reduces conflict risks, and links water decisions to broader development outcomes.

It also means connecting water and sanitation to the wider transformation agenda to food systems, energy, urbanization, climate adaptation, peacebuilding, and job creation.

This is where the Africa Dialogue Series has an important role to play.

It provides a platform to bring together African policymakers, the African Union, the Â鶹APP system, regional institutions, our young leaders, women leaders, technical experts and partners, all around one shared objective, moving from ambition to action.

The dialogue helps us ask the right questions.

How do we strengthen governance and solutions so that water reaches every community fairly?

How do we mobilize financing that supports long-term systems, not short-term fixes?

And how do we use data and innovation to anticipate risks, manage resources, and deliver services?

And how do we ensure that the voices of those most affected, especially women, young people, and communities on the front lines, shape the solutions?

These are not abstract questions.

They go to the heart of Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals. They go to the promise that development must reach everyone everywhere.

As we launch this year's series, let us be clear. Water and sanitation are not side issues. They are central to Africa's development pathway.

They are central to peace and security, and they are central to the dignity of every person. Let this dialogue be a space for practical solutions, African leadership and renewed partnership between the African Union and the Â鶹APP.

And let us work together so that sustainable water availability and safe sanitation become a lived reality for every community, advancing dignity, opportunity, and lasting peace for the Africa we want.

Thank you.