To meet the Millennium Development Goals target on water and sanitation, the Africa continent requires about 94 billion US dollars.

This is contained in a report of the Africa Development Bank (ADB) at the 5th World Water Forum, which held in Istanbul, Turkey recently.

The report had it that the money was needed to invest in new and existing water and sanitation infrastructure provision in the Africa sub-region.

The report indicated that while the water projection is 37 billion US dollars, that of sanitation is $57 billion.

The ADB report, which relied on a World Health Organization (WHO) study, says $126b is required yearly to meet the basic water supply and sanitation services across the continent, which it pointed out was equivalent to between 1.5 to 2 percent Gross domestic Product (GDP) across the continent.

The WHO study put existing expenditure in drinking water and sanitation levels at about $6.1 billion per annum.

While $2.8 billions is being invested in capital expenditure, existing spending on recurrent operation and maintenance has reached levels of $3.5 billion.

It disclosed that with annualized investment needs at around $10 billion early and annual investments of $6.1 billion per annum, the finance gap is currently in the region of $4 billion per annul.