Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa water, Sanitation May-June2015 Vol. 10 No.3 | Page 41

Roundup “In the long term, if we don’t make it available we’re afraid they’ll just take it,” he said, per CBS. CEWAS start-up programme 2015 - become a water and sanitation entrepreneur Farmers are provided water rights based on their size and output, according to Modern Farmer. That water is not counted when the state considers its available water supply. Do you have a great business idea in the sanitation or water management sector and want to become an entrepreneur? Then we are looking for YOU! “That means instead of growing crops, the farmers in the region have decided to actually sell about 20 percent their water to the state, at the price of $700 per acrefoot of water. An acre-foot is a unit of volume; imagine a swimming pool that’s the size of an acre and a foot deep. It’s equal to about 325,000 gallons of water,” the report said. In September 2015 Cewas, the international centre for water management services, based in Willisau, Switzerland, starts the fifth cewas start-up programme that provides you with the skills, knowledge and networks you need to transform your idea into a working start-up. The price is sometimes higher than that, since the value of water rights goes up as the drought worsens. In 2013, “Michael Perez, a farmer in the state’s Central Valley, paid $250 an acre-foot for water to irrigate his almonds, cherries, tomatoes, and cotton,” Bloomb