Tanzania was glad to secure the services of a British-led consortium to run the newly privatised water system in its capital Dar es Salaam. But then the price of water started to rise ... (...)

Three British expatriates were detained by the police in Tanzania, senior managers at City Water, a consortium responsible for managing Dar es Salaam's water supply. After being held for several hours, the men were served with notices describing them as "undesirable immigrants" and told to leave the country. That evening at Julius Nyerere airport, they were escorted on to a plane bound for London. Their families were left to follow some days later.

(...) Their departure from Tanzania signalled the end of a flagship World Bank privatisation deal that had been trumpeted as a modern solution to public water supply in an underdeveloped country. And it marked the beginning of a legal action that has proved hugely controversial in aid and development circles as Biwater plc, the Dorking-based private water company that led the consortium - and which is owned by Adrian White, a multi-millionaire ex-BBC governor and a former high sheriff of Surrey - pitted itself against the government of one of the world's poorest countries.

The story of water in most cities in the developing world is that the group paying the most is the poor, because they have to resort to the water vendors who peddle this precious commodity around the streets. But in Dar es Salaam it is not only the poor. Decades of neglect and underinvestment in the city's water infrastructure mean that fewer than 100,000 households - in a city of 3.5 million people - have running water.

If anyone has any more information on this particular situation in Tanzania, I would appreciate hearing it. But also, it would be interesting to know of other World Bank water privatization schemes, and how those are faring.