Finding new ways to tackle the growing challenge of accessing
clean drinking water has become a priority for most countries
around the world, including South Africa. With recent statistics
indicating that more people are dying annually from unsafe water
than from all forms of violence combined, including war, there
has never been a greater global need. In South Africa, an
estimated 5.7 million people lack access to basic water
services, and about 17 to 18 million people lack basic
sanitation services. Impacting mainly the marginalised poor,
these figures are likely to increase due to industrial
expansion, rising population and climate change – which is set
to drastically affect sub-Saharan Africa. One of the approaches
being explored in many countries, including South Africa, to
tackle the challenge of providing clean water, is
nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials
at a very tiny scale – essentially at the atomic and molecular
levels. At the nanoscale, the normal rules of physics and