Ghana, Nigeria and Morocco are amongst the most water-stressed countries in the world. Investments in infrastructure by corporations help to fill the technical and budgetary gaps left by municipalities, as well as to protect local people from the negative side-effects of poor infrastructure.
Nestlé’s factory in Southeast Ghana is part of an industrial zone with a waste water treatment plant. An investigation by Nestlé revealed that the local treatment plant was of insufficient quality, so a monitoring programme was installed in October 2005 to calculate parameters for a custom-built waste-water treatment plant. Nestlé engineers who are now supporting the start-up of the recently built treatment plant in Nestlé’s factory in Agbara, Nigeria, worked on the Ghana plant through 2007. The work in Nigeria had earned Nestlé the "Most Environmentally Proactive Industry" Award from the local governor.
Furthermore, Nestlé’s El-Jadida factory in Morocco is show-cased by the local government as a leading example of waste water treatment for other companies and operations.