The Christian Council of Lesotho is worried, however, that the residents displaced by the project are bypassed when it comes to the benefits.
Malethibela Lits'esane, 35, gazes up to the mountains surrounding the village of Ha Makhalanyane in Lesotho, the kingdom encompassed by mighty South Africa. She longs for the life she once lived several miles beyond those mountains.
Five years have passed since she and her husband Emmanuel, 36, were forced from their village of Lamapong Ha Koporala. When the Mohale dam was built, many of the people living in the surrounding area were resettled to other locations. Two of them were the Lits'esanes.
Malethibela Lits'esane carries a jug that she uses to water the small field where the couple grows food, where their sole cow grazes and some chickens peck for food. The garden-sized patch bears no comparison with the pastures by the Mohale dam, where the livestock used to find food, and the people herbs and firewood.
While the Lesotho Highlands Water Project raises millions of dollars each month - much needed revenue for this relatively poor country - it has hardly benefited the people who had to make way for the dams.
Running water - six months a year
During the rainy season, Malethibela can fill up her jug from a tap placed between the cluster of houses which make up her neighbourhood. From the end of July till January her everyday life changes. Drought comes creeping in, and the community tap runs dry.
Malethibela then has to walk for four to five hours to bring water back home. She will carry 20-40 litres of water on her head, having no chance of bringing back the 30-50 litres per person which the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme considers the daily minimum.
During the drought it is impossible for the Lits'esanes and their neighbours to grow any vegetables, and they have to take the cattle to far-away grazing areas. This is far from what they were promised when they were told they had to resettle.
In the 80-household village of Ha Mallani, situated on the hillside above the Katse dam, people are still waiting for the water tap they had been promised. Over ten years after the dam was completed they still have to rely on a few natural, unprotected springs.
Above one of them, the construction company has even placed two toilets threatening to leak into the spring. Just one kilometre below lies the Katse reservoir, with water that the villagers are not allowed to access, covering their former fields.
One visible benefit of the water development project for the people of the Katse region catches the eye of travellers: almost every single one of the traditional round houses with straw roofing now has a concrete toilet next to it.
