Water and sanitation; Africa's biggest challenge

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG Action Campaign) of ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for all by 2030 is an ambitious target for Africa. According to my research , nearly half of Africans don’t have access to clean water and two-thirds lack access to sewage infrastructure. Improvements in both of these areas have been made in the past decade, but huge numbers of Africans still live without these basic necessities. The lack of access to water and sanitation has not gone unnoticed by people living in Africa. Almost half of the continent’s citizens are not happy with the way their governments are handling water and sanitation. Lack of access to water and sanitation is a matter of life and death. Contaminated water and inadequate sanitation help transmit diseases like diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery and typhoid. In Africa, more than 315,000 children die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. Globally, deaths from diarrhoea caused by unclean drinking water are estimated at 502,000 each year, most of them of young children. The situation on the ground; To assess the situation on the ground, my research looked at 36 African countries in 2021/2022 and asked nearly 54,000 citizens about their access to water and sanitation. This was in addition to recording direct observations in the thousands of surveyed communities. I found that almost half (45%) of Africans went without enough clean water for home use during the past year, while one in five (19%) did so many times or always. One-third of surveyed communities (36%) lacked access to a piped-water system, and two-thirds (68%) lacked access to sewage infrastructure. The infrastructure situation has improved somehow over the past decade, the share of communities enjoying piped-water supplies increased by 14 percentage points, and sewerage has been extended to an additional 8% of communities. Even for those who live in zones with the necessary infrastructure, however, access to clean water and toilets is often difficult. More than half (51%) of those surveyed said they had to leave their compound to access water. One in five had to leave their compound to use a latrine, and another 8% had no access at all to a latrine or toilet, even outside their compound. Rural residents are far worse off than their urban counterparts when it comes to access to water and sanitation. Two-thirds (66%) of rural respondents had to go outside their compound to access water, compared with 30% of urbanites. About 27% had to go outside the compound for a toilet and 11% had no access at all to a toilet. This is compared with 12% in urban areas, where just 3% had no access to toilet facilities. On average, a majority (55%) of citizens rated their government’s performance in handling water and sanitation services as fairly bad or very bad. These negative appraisals were the majority view in all regions except North Africa, but even there, 46% rated their government’s handling of water and sanitation services as bad. These declining performance ratings should be a red flag for democratic governments that are still unable to provide their citizens with these most basic services. Safe and readily available water is a human right and an important contributor to public health. Improved access to safe water and sanitation boosts economic growth, contributes to poverty reduction, and is fundamental to achieving the goals of improved health and education, greater food security, and improved environmental sustainability #UniversalAccess #SanitationandWaterAccess #SDG6 #SDGS