How Can Africa's Water and Sanitation Shortfall be Solved?

On 22 March, groups across the globe marked World Water Day, an occasion for highlighting the importance of water and sanitation as well as the many shortfalls in its provision.

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are well understood to be critical to eradicating poverty, improving health, nutrition, education and gender equality, and enabling economic growth. Some2,000 childrendie every day from diseases linked to water and sanitation; it is estimated that women in the Global South spend a cumulative 200 million hours a day collecting water, walking an average of 6 km a day, and carrying weights of up to 20 kg; lack of safe water and sanitation is estimated to cost sub-Saharan African around5%of its annual GDP; and women are at far greater risk of sexual assault when searching for places to defecate at night time.

Water and sanitation targets are both captured within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), withtarget 7caiming to "halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation." Debate remains around how access figures are calculated, but the UN estimates that while 783 million people still live without access to clean water, at a global level the water target has been met five years ahead of schedule.

By contrast, however, sanitation is the most off-target of all the MDGs, so much so that UN Deputy Secretary General, Jan Eliasson, refers to the sanitation shortfall as a "scandal." Currently, 40% of the world's population - 2.5 billion people − lacks access to a toilet. In fact, more people around the world havemobile phonesthan access to toilets.

In terms of both water and sanitation, Africa is far behind other areas of the world: across the continent, 327 million people lack access to safe drinking water while 565 million lack access to sanitation - 210 million more than in 1990. It is estimated that at current rates of progress, it will take until at least 2030 for sub-Saharan Africa to meet the MDG water target, and more than 150 years to reach the sanitation target.

Think Africa Press asked a selection of experts on water and sanitation to evaluate why the situation in African countries is such, and what can be done to change it - whether in a national or pan-African context.

Leo Atakpu, National Coordinator, NEWSAN (Nigeria), and Chairman,Africa Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation(ANEW):

A number of reasons are adducible as to why Africa lags behind in access to water and sanitation.

First, it is about the failure of governments in the region to deliver essential services to their citizens, characterised by bad governance practices which are not particular to just the water and sanitation sector. Large amounts of money allocated to the water sector, including foreign aid, are often either misappropriated or outright stolen through corrupt practices. This is a major problem in most of sub-Saharan Africa and unless this issue is tackled head on, efforts to provide water and sanitation to the region's poor will remain a pipe dream. Civil society groups in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector need to rise up to their responsibility of mobilising citizens to hold their governments accountable and end impunity in water governance.

A second point is the lack of political commitment. Governments, civil society and donors, as key stakeholders, have not demonstrated sufficient commitment to sanitation as evidenced by the meagre priority assigned to the issue in most poverty reduction strategies and national budgets. It is still a puzzle to many why sanitation is so often 'left behind'. It is really shocking that schools and health centres are still built without toilets; that access to toilets is so far behind access to water supply; and that sanitation has failed to be translated from commitments into national policy and budget lines in most countries.

However, there is some evidence that this is slowly changing at higher levels of policymaking, for example from theAfrican Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW). There are also positive examples of local commitment to improved sanitation, including: the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, which is spearheading an initiative to roll out efficient support for rural sanitation through health extension workers; and the government of Nigeria and UNICEF's work with theSociety for Water and Sanitation (NEWSAN), under the aegis of the National Task Group on Sanitation (NTGS), to renew its approach to sanitation through piloting and implementing new ‘community-led' approaches. Yet there is negligible evidence of commitment among many other key line ministries and at local government level.

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Taxonomy

• Water & Diseases
• Water & Sanitation