Water and electricity systems are no longer separate and isolated, but are now intertwined in South Africa and across Africa. So highlighted Siemens South Africa CEO Sabine Dall'Omo, in her keynote address on the second day of the Enlit Africa 2026 conference, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

Water needed electricity, she pointed out, for pumping and treating. Water and electricity were both essential to maintain and grow the country's industrial base. The two sectors were rapidly merging.

"We need to identify the interdependency between the two systems," she said. "We need to digitalise our networks, not only on the electricity side but also on the water side."

Digitalisation will allow these interdependencies to be identified. In future, water and electricity teams will have to work together, even to integrate.

She noted that South Africa now had both centralised and decentralised electricity generation. Water suppliers needed backup power, in case of loadshedding or other electricity disruptions. Digitalisation would allow extremely rapid reaction to power supply disruptions.

Digitalisation will also allow failures in a water system, such as leaks and blockages, to be rapidly detected, identified and located. 

Combined with automation, digitalisation will reduce response times and increase efficiencies for both categories of utility. It will allow the identification of weak spots in the systems. And AI can be used to run simulations of failures.

When it came to the development of such integrated systems, she affirmed that the analysis of the return on investment had to include calculating the impact on society and the economy of disruptions to water and electricity supplies. 

Nor was it a one-way relationship. She highlighted that water systems could be used to generate electricity. In Europe, waste sludge from water treatment plants could no longer be used as fertiliser on farms. Technology had been developed to burn this sludge and generate electricity as a result. That could also be done in South Africa: water treatment plants could be used to generate electricity.

"We have a great opportunity to optimise both systems, water and electricity," asserted Dall'Omo. It would benefit both business and wider society.