Foreword

Water Governance in Cape Town adds to the rich compendium of country, region, city and thematic reviews published as part of the OECD Studies on Water over the past 15 years. This first OECD water policy dialogue at the local level contributes to expanding the global outreach of OECD’s work adding to regional analyses of water governance in OECD countries (2011), Latin America and the Caribbean (2012), African Cities (2021) and Asia-Pacific (2020), as well as national water governance policy dialogues in Mexico (2013), The Netherlands (2014), Jordan (2015), Tunisia (2015), Brazil (2015 and 2017), Argentina (2019) and Peru (2021).

This report is an output of the OECD Programme on Water Security for Sustainable Development in Africa, launched in 2018 by the OECD Secretary-General Mr Ángel Gurría, the recipient of the 6th edition of the King Hassan II Great World Water Prize.

This report summarises the findings from a year-long bottom-up policy dialogue with more than 80 stakeholders in Cape Town and South Africa. It provides a diagnosis of key water governance challenges in Cape Town as well as policy recommendations to enhance more effective, efficient and inclusive water governance. The report argues that the water crisis in Cape Town presentedan opportunity for new ideas to emerge and for greater social and political acceptance of needed reforms. This analysis, and the underlying consultation process, are conceived as a first step to support better water policy design. This publication contributes to the work of the Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC). It was approved by RDPC delegates via written procedure on 5 February 2021 under the cote CFE/RDPC(2021).