Dying of Thirst
In the cities of Sub-Saharan Africa, population is rising and water supply is plummeting.
Picture the world as 100 people.
10 of these 100 don’t have access to safe drinking water.
That’s right. 10 percent of the living population suffer from a lack of life’s most basic necessity.
As the world progresses toward the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015, we’ve made massive leaps toward eliminating poverty, improving education in developing nations, and lowering child mortality rates. However, far too many people in developing nations — especially the region of Sub-Saharan Africa — are devastated with an iniquitous water crisis.
The majority of citizens from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), such as South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, and Liberia, struggle to easily access a safe water source. This terrible reality exists not only in rural areas, but urbanized cities as well.
About a year ago, Richard Marcantonio, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, published a case study on water-borne illness in Choma, the capital city in the Southern Province of Zambia. Marcantonio conducted surveys on 224 households in the area about the types of their water sources: either unimproved, which is surface water such as a river or pond, or improved, which is water from boreholes that is piped into the home or central public area. Along with this question, Marcantonio asked about perceived illness, accessibility to a source, and water consumed per person. He determined that ponds — an unimproved source — were the most commonly used water source, used in over 70 percent of households in Choma. Additionally, his research suggested that 1 in every 3 households experienced a serious water-borne illness in the past two years.¹
To get a basic understanding of the problem at hand, we should first understand the root of its occurrence. A prominent cause of urban water scarcity in SSA is caused by extreme urbanization in large cities. Metropolitan areas such as Cape Town, South Africa, Abuja, Nigeria, and Kampala, Uganda, are expected to see unprecedented urban growth. Over the next 35 years, the population of the world living in cities is expected to rise from 3.9 billion to 6.3 billion people — about a 61.5% change. However, urban populations in SSA are estimated to exceed triple their current count, from 346 Million to 1.1 Billion.²
Lack of infrastructure is the other major player in this wicked problem. As a whole, SSA is still a developing region. African nations’ socioeconomic infrastructure struggles in comparison to the quality of developing nations around the world, in factors such as secure internet servers, air transport, and quality of ports.³
As the sheer number of people in cities rises, so will the demand for water. And unfortunately, there just aren’t enough formal water outlets for everyone in the cities. Clean water isn’t necessary for just drinking. It is vital for the cultivation of agriculture. Household and public sanitation relies on clean water. Safe water plays a crucial role in defending from illness; up until 2015, water-borne illness such as diarrhoea accounted for 7.7% of all deaths in Africa.¹ Without an abundance of available water, a city struggles to build a majority of its infrastructure. Quite simply, the cities are outgrowing the resources made to fit a smaller population; and without infrastructural growth comes extreme poverty for far too many people.
The undeveloped (and in some countries, nonexistent) water policies in the region do nothing but add to the issue faced by governments and citizens alike. Policies struggle to tackle water scarcity successfully because of how complex the problem is. JC Padowski and JW Jawitz explain that “Disconnects also emerge when management is compartmentalized into specific topics such as ‘water quality’ or ‘water allocation’; as focusing on only one aspect ignores the intrinsic and complex connection between all water resource problems”.⁴ When the problem exists in a multitude of disciplines, collaboration between politicians, researchers, and lawmakers is essential. But these groups of professionals don’t typically work together. Communication is difficult in such a high stress environment, and unfortunately for citizens, this miscommunication usually dwarfs progress. To add to this, a structure of economic dualism ‒ significant fundamental disparity between welfare of the rich and the poor ‒ is prevalent in African cities. Many political leaders live without having to worry about the perils that many of their people face, and see no incentive to work toward them.
However, there is still hope for a reversal in trends and a leap toward the good. Take, for example, the country of Algeria. Cities such as Algiers were facing urbanization and lack of sanitation, and a costly government investment into dam systems in 2008 had just been deemed mostly unsuccessful. In response, the government counteracted this failure with a successful joint project with Hamma Water Desalination Spa, a global group which designed and constructed one of the first desalination plants in Africa. In short, a desalination plant separates salt from water through a chemical process known as osmosis. In this case, the plant uses seawater from the Mediterranean Sea and converts it to safe, clean water that is inputted to the water supply. Today, the Hamma plant supplies water to more than 2 million citizens of Algiers.⁵
In Kenya, communities recently began taking a delegated management approach to the management of water pipes and aquifers in some urban slums. As a result, the price of water costs have been lowered and the revenue from operation has been streamlined efficiently. Managing these resources on more of a local level allows for costs to be cut significantly; this is absolutely crucial for poor families to acquire the water they need.
Solutions like the desalination plant or the delegated management have proved to effectively answer the challenge of supplying water to a rapidly-growing population. In their water scarcity report published earlier this year, the United Nations prescribed: “If equal opportunities, proper education and training are guaranteed, the intellectual contribution that might come from this growing population could help Africa get on track for achieving [clean water and sanitation for all people]”.⁶ The solutions to this daunting issue call for governmental action. However, it isn’t simply about improving the resources necessary to supply water to an entire city. It’s just as much about cultivating a proper education system, developing and implementing effective healthcare strategies, and assuring that government officials are invested in the overall well-being of their respective communities. If governments can find a way to take care of their own people and develop them as leaders, they might be able to contract a home-grown solution.
It has become clear that the extreme water scarcity and management problems in cities South-Saharan Africa hinders the socioeconomic growth of the entire region. The only question left to ask is: what are governments going to do to fix this?
The perfect, precise solution isn’t out there. There isn’t a procedural manual which can walk national leaders through the process. But there are a few major elements that will be vital to success. Governments must make a commitment toward the research and implementation of various management strategies and innovations. To do this, they must cultivate leaders through improved healthcare and education systems. Luckily, improvements in one of these areas will result in a corresponding improvement of the other. But most importantly, governments must take responsibility and act immediately. For as long as they don’t, they are wasting decades of advancement, and the lives of human beings.
- Marcantonio, Richard, Water Insecurity, Illness, and Other Factors of Daily Life, a Case Study from Choma District, Southern Province, Zambia
- Dos Santos, Adams, Neville, Wadade, de Sherbinin, E.Mullin, Bernhardt, Adamo, 2.1
- DataPlanet, National Infrastructure from the World Development Indicators Database
- The Future of Global Water Scarcity, 47
- Coutinho, Daniel, Water Management Problems in South Africa
- UN Water — World Water Development Report 2019, Page 157.
