Water In Africa
Africa appears blessed with abundant water resources: large rivers include the Congo, Nile, Zambezi and Niger and Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest.
But Africa is the second driest continent in the world, after Australia, and millions of Africans still suffer from water shortages throughout the year. Shortages are often due to problems of uneven distribution - sometimes there is much water where there are fewer people - and also to management of existing supplies that could be improved. One example of the disparity in water availability lies in the Congo basin where 30 per cent of the continent’s water drains land inhabited by only 10 per cent of Africa’s population.
Water and Health
Almost half of the population (778 million in 1997) suffers from one of the six major water-related diseases. Lack of risk preparedness and mitigation is also a factor: in Mozambique over 1 million people were displaced by the floods of 1999/2000 and an unknown number killed. Every day, 650 people die from diarrhea in Africa, mainly children under five years of age. More than 10,000 people contracted cholera during outbreaks in South Africa in 2001.
Water Sanitation
During the last ten years, provision of sanitation in rural Africa has decreased by 2 per cent, and the low levels of urban water supply and sanitation has hardly improved. Arid and semi-arid areas, especially in Sudano-Sahelian Africa and North Africa, are likely to be most affected by increased water stress. Underlying many of these problems is the fact that water is a finite resource, and there are increasing demands and pressure due to competing uses of water for agricultural and industrial production.
Water Scarcity
Fourteen countries in Africa are already experiencing water stress; another 11 countries are expected to join them by 2025 at which time nearly 50 percent of Africa’s predicted population of 1.45 billion people will face water stress or scarcity. Nearly 51 per cent (300 million people) in sub-Saharan countries lack access to a supply of safe water and 41 percent lack adequate sanitation. More than 80 of Africa’s river and lake basins are shared by two or more countries and many countries depend on water flowing from outside their national boundaries. Some large-scale water infrastructure projects including dams may exacerbate the impacts of flooding and drought, threatening people’s livelihood and further reducing their access to water.
