Water and Sanitation in Africa

In many African villages, clean drinking water is a luxury, and every day people walk for miles in the hopes of finding it. (Photo: Lucian Coman, Shutterstock.com)

 In the weeks leading up to the U.N. observation of World Water Day (March 22), U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced a major achievement. Nearly 90 percent of the world's population now have access to clean drinking water, up from 76 percent a decade before. But the benefits of that water are still elusive for hundreds of millions.

Godeliève Niragira is a mother of four in Gikungu, a suburb of Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Her community has running water—sometimes.

"We can spend two days with no water, and the shocking thing is that no one ever tells us the reason it was cut off," she says. "We have to camp out in front of the tap and stay there until we have enough water to fill a jug or a bucket."

When there is no water, no one can wash their hands. "Everyone is afraid of catching some epidemic disease, which could arise from one moment to the next," adds another resident.

According to a UNICEF report, diarrhea linked to unclean water kills 24,000 young people around the world every day.

There was no running water at all in Gikungu until a neighborhood association raised 600,000 Burundian francs ($465, six months' salary for a middle-class professional) to outfit 120 houses with plumbing. "It's better than nothing," says a member of the association.

Despite steps forward over the past few years, Sub-Saharan Africa "remains at the back of the queue" in terms of drinking water and sanitation, says George Yap, executive director of WaterCan, a Canadian NGO active in East Africa. He says access to drinking water goes hand in hand with access to improved sanitation and hygiene education, which is much less widespread.

"We talk about drinking water, but we don't talk enough about sanitation," adds Anais Mourey of Coalition Eau, a French partnership of NGOs dedicated to increasing water access. "It's a taboo subject even though it's natural. … We all go to the toilet."

According to Coalition Eau, 40 percent of the world's population, around 3 billion people, lacks access to toilets. All seven continents are affected, although South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are the worst off. The United Nations had hoped to halve the proportion of the world's population without access to drinking water and sanitation, but has acknowledged that "improvements in sanitation are bypassing the poor" and "the sanitation target appears to be out of reach."

"We have to treat access to drinking water and sanitation separately, but overall it is one global issue," Yap says. "With access to drinking water we're on track, but with sanitation we're off track. … We could help a family with a pit latrine, but what happens if they don't wash their hands afterwards? We could build a well with clean, delicious water, but if you put it in a dirty bucket that water is dangerous again."

Written by Ruby Pratka. Read more@worldpress.org