Waters of life flowing through capital city

For more than 10 years, a good stock of purified bottled water has been essential for Sun Guoqiang.

Addis Ababa, where he lives, is said to be the Ethiopian city with the best public amenities and services, but there's still sewage running through the streets of the capital.

For Sun, that means drinking tap water is ill-advised, especially if the water hasn't been boiled.

Sun is determined to tackle the problem at its source. And as head of the largest water supply system operator in the country, he is probably one of the people in the best position to do just that.

Sun, 44, general manager of CGC Overseas Corp, Ethiopia, has been in Africa for 16 years - 14 years in Ethiopia and two in Nigeria. He is from Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, a green city whose credentials are praised in the Chinese saying: "In heaven there is paradise, and on Earth there are Hangzhou and Suzhou."

For Sun, that image of his hometown has slowly dissipated over the years, lost not in the romantic mist that sometimes shrouds Hangzhou, but in the windy, dusty reality of the highland country to which he has devoted much of his career.

CGC Overseas Corp is active in five areas in Ethiopia: water supply systems, road and bridge construction, well drilling, glassmaking and supplying construction equipment.

It is also active in more than 10 African countries, including Angola, Kenya and Nigeria.

The company said that over the past 10 years, it has built 1,400 kilometers of roads, and the company's glass factory is widely regarded as a marker of Ethiopia's progress on the path to industrialization. The factory's most important product lines are 2-millimeter-thick to 8-millimeter-thick sheet glass for windows, and the company said it account for 95 percent of the Ethiopian market.

"We don't sell people cranes when they need milk bottles and diapers," Sun said, stressing the company's attention to its marketing.

"We study the needs of African people and decide on our products. Obviously, people here have many needs, and we don't trick them into buying products they don't really need."

Water supply is one of the urgent needs, and Sun said that building a system to do that has given him a huge sense of accomplishment.

Over the past 10 years, the company has helped raise the water supply coverage in Addis Ababa from 37 percent to 90 percent, which means the great bulk of city dwellers have access to tap water. Those who don't are living in remote areas.

The average water supply for urban residents is 100 to 120 liters for each person a day, according to the World Health Organization, but in suburban areas of Addis Ababa, many people have far less.

On the outskirts of the city, whose population was put at 3.4 million in 2007, some still obtain their water from local sources.

"People have to fetch water with buckets and kettles for their daily cooking, drinking and cleaning," said Sun. "We want to help change that so they all have tap water."

The urban water supply system, which the French began to build in the 1930s, is showing its age, but given the expense of building a new system, the government decided to find partners to renovate the exiting one. CGC Overseas Corp and a French company won the contract.

The project includes a dam and a water treatment system. The company will increase the height of the dam so it can hold more water and expand the capacity of the water treatment system.

Addis Ababa has had no sewerage system, and the company is designing one. With sewage running on the street, even five-star hotels depend on sewer scavengers to take the muck out of the city, said Sun.

Over time, the company's water supply solutions have reached beyond the cities into the whole country.

"Ethiopia is not short of water, but it is not evenly distributed," said Sun. "So we have to transport the resources between regions."

A recent project involves taking water from one major industrial city, Dire Dawa, which is at a low altitude and has plenty of water, to another, Harar, which is at a high altitude and has no underground water.

The company drilled wells in Dire Dawa and uses pumps to send water to Harar. The $12 million project was partly sponsored by the African Development Bank.

The Ethiopian economy has grown 10 percent a year in recent years, and this is giving the company more opportunities.

"Population growth by far outstrips the development of amenities, and just when infrastructure catches up with public demand for water, industries take off and even more water is needed for them," said Sun.

The company is helping build a dam on the Gibe River on the northwestern outskirts of Addis Ababa to add another 100,000 metric tons of water supply to industries in the city.

Another project high on the company's agenda is a 316-km road from Dessie to Gunde Wyen, two cities separated by the Nile. The $200 million project includes two sections of road on each side of the Nile and a bridge to join them. Construction began in 2006, and the project is due to be completed this year.

Previously, to travel between two big cities of Amare state, Bahir Dar and Dessie, which are separated by a tributary of the Nile, people had to take a big detour through Addis Ababa.

"The new road has cut the distance by two-thirds," said Sun.

The road also makes life easier for farmers. The Nile valley is a major grain production area, and the newly built roads are helping farmers sell their produce quickly in Bahir Dar and Dessie.

Qin Jian, deputy head of mission at the Chinese embassy in Ethiopia, said local residents are familiar with Chinese companies.

"The companies have played a large part in developing infrastructure, which Ethiopians see as ensuring their well-being and sustainable long-term development," said Qin.

"Ethiopia is a typical African market. Here, we don't sell them state-of-art high-tech products, but we build infrastructure and open factories, so they get what they need the most urgently, and this is helping development."