South Africa, Lesotho and the project financiers must avoid repeating the mistakes of Phase I of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project – Phase II (LHWP II), the scheme that will transfer water from Lesotho’s highlands to South Africa’s economic hub, Gauteng, while generating hydroelectric power for Lesotho. Development projects funded by public banks must work for women, not against them.
Strong leadership from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), New Development Bank (NDB), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) is crucial. Anything less compromises women’s well-being, strips away their dignity and ignores the interdependence that sustains rural life.
Every drop of water harnessed from the Mountain Kingdom tells two stories. One is about development finance, regional integration and renewable energy, highlighting the promise of shared responsibility. The other is about the displaced and disempowered women, rendered invisible by a development model that builds dams but violates rights.
Despite several gender strategies on paper, commitments on gender equality by the DBSA, the NDB and the AfDB have yet to be translated into meaningful environmental or social safeguards or protections on the ground.
Women and girls affected by Phase II of the project continue to be excluded from consultations and overlooked in project design and decision-making processes as had been done during Phase I. Their specific needs and contributions are ignored, silencing their voices, and denying them agency in shaping the development that directly affects their lives.
Additionally, ongoing blasting activities damage homes and render properties unsafe. Natural springs and rivers long relied upon for drinking, cooking and sanitation are increasingly polluted by construction runoff and dust. Water pipes are also destroyed during construction, often without repair or alternatives. As a result, women and girls must walk long distances to find clean water, exposing them to risks of gender-based violence.
Findings by the Seinoli Legal Centre, which supports 17 directly affected communities, show that women disproportionately bear the brunt of the project’s harm. Many are losing access to land they depend on for food and income. Compensation is usually paid to male heads of households, excluding women from decision-making and economic redress in line with discriminatory customary practices. Resettlement sites lack clean water and fertile soil, deepening their vulnerability. Consultations are largely gender-blind, rendering women’s unpaid labour and informal livelihoods invisible.
Women are stretched thin between survival and resistance. The influx of male labourers has also triggered a rise in transactional sex, sexual exploitation of girls, school drop-outs and a spike in HIV/Aids. Still, the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA), the highland project’s implementing authority, operates without a gender policy or responsive framework. Despite this, project financiers continue to disburse tranches of funds, even as their own safeguards go unmet.
The rural community of Ha-Phohla faces resettlement talks with the LHDA, but four senior widows risk being left behind. Though their homes lie just outside the official impact zone, the rising dam waters will soon surround them and they cannot afford to relocate on their own.
The LHDA has rejected demands to include them in the resettlement plan, offering roads and water instead. But no infrastructure can replace the protective social fabric that resettlement will dismantle. Abandoning these women means condemning them to isolation, neglect, vulnerability and indignity.
What should be done?
The LHWP, the AfDB, DBSA and NDB have articulated strong commitments to gender equality and inclusive development. Without rigorous enforcement, monitoring and accountability, the very harms they aim to prevent go on unchecked.
First, the NDB and DBSA must establish a comprehensive gender strategy or policy, following the example of the AfDB.
Second, gender strategies must translate into action. Financing should ensure gender-responsive implementation, with disbursements tied to measurable outcomes, gender impact assessments, genuine consultation with women and safeguards against harm to land, livelihoods, and resettlement.
Third, monitoring and accountability must be strengthened through independent, community-informed oversight, published gender-disaggregated data and active involvement of women and civil society.
Fourth, women must be empowered as full stakeholders, with barriers removed and equitable access to legal support, livelihood restoration and compensation.
Fifth, project implementation must align with financiers’ policies. Implementers such as the LHDA must be held accountable for gender, social and environmental safeguards. Public development banks must finance justice, dignity and equality — not only infrastructure.
With the sustainable development goal financing gap of more than $4 trillion, the AfDB, DBSA and NDB, as drivers of change in the global financial architecture as public development banks, must ensure funds benefit women and vulnerable communities and prevent harm as highlighted last month at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development.
South Africa has less than 100 days until hosting the 2025 G20 Summit — the first in Africa which will take place under the theme “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability”. Attention is on South Africa as it plays an important role in making progress on reforming global governance structures and financial institutions. This includes ensuring that the voices of African women, communities and civil society are heard in projects and structures of national and multilateral development finance institutions such as the DBSA, NDB and AfDB.
South Africa has made water infrastructure investment a key G20 priority and hosted the Africa Water Investment Summit as part of its G20 Presidential Legacy Initiative on Water Investments in Cape Town this month, emphasising Africa’s $30 billion annual funding gap, and highlighting the need for improved governance and accountability.
As South Africa positions water at the highest levels of the global political and financial agenda from G20 and COP30 to the UN 2026 Water Conference, women must not be left behind.
Mosa Letsie is the programme lawyer for gender justice and women empowerment at the Seinoli Legal Centre. Marianne Buenaventura Goldman is the programme coordinator (Finance for Development) at Forus.
Public banks – Development Bank of Southern Africa, African Development Bank and the New Development Bank – and the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority render women invisible in a process that professes to be inclusive
