Alex Rose-Innes
According to various expert opinions and scholarly papers, the exploding population across Africa and increasingly expanding urban areas are but two of the main drivers of water stress on the dry continent.
Digging deeper, the other major challenges, typical continental issues, continue to be weak governments, corruption and mismanagement of resources and poor long-term investment. Add to that lack of adequate education and environmental research, it is no surprise that researchers fear that by 2030, the gap between demand and supply would be as high as 40%.
Add to this sad list, industrial waste from mining and unregulated industries and erosion from deforestation and the picture of a green Africa becomes slightly blurred. Already, the disruption and contamination of water supply in urban infrastructures and rural area had incited domestic and cross-border violence. The water war, it is said, would start in Africa.
The urgency of incorporating water improvements into economic development had never been as urgent as now to improve public health and advance the economic stability of the region.
What is water stress?
Water stress refers to economic, social, or environmental problems caused by unmet water needs. When four years ago the Ivory Coast split between the rebel-led north and government-ruled south, the conflict precipitated a dangerous health threat to the region, increasing the risk of water-borne diseases such as cholera. The Council on Foreign Relations believes the disruption was a political ploy to put pressure on the rebel-led north.
While water stress occurs throughout the world, no region had been more afflicted than sub-Saharan Africa. The continuing crisis in Darfur stems in part from disputes over water with tensions between nomadic farming groups who are competing for water and grazing land. Mark Giordano of the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka summed up the overriding problem when he said that most water extracted for development in sub-Saharan Africa, be it drinking water, for livestock watering or irrigation, is in some sense trans boundary. Because water sources are often cross-border, conflict emerges.
In a Natural Resources Journal article (already written by top legal experts in their field in 2005), national boundaries created trans boundary waters as a by-product. For example, the Niger basin became trans boundary during the colonial period as both the French and British empires shared the water resources, whereas the Senegal river basin was solely under French colonial rule until Guinea gained independence in 1958, which internationalised access to the Senegal river basin.
The UN Environment Programme directors (UNEP) recently said that current access to safe water in sub-Saharan Africa is worse than any other area on the continent, with only 22 to 34 % of populations across at least eight sub-Saharan countries having access to safe water. The UNEP projects that in the year 2025, as many as 25 African nations, roughly half the continent’s countries, are expected to suffer from a greater combination of increased water scarcity and water stress.
In a January 2006, a United Nation research paper which addressed global progress on water quality, P.B. Anand, an environmental economist at Britain’s Bradford Centre for International Development, noted a significant regional disparity in sanitation infrastructure between sub-Saharan Africa and other regions .
Of the 980 large dams in sub-Saharan Africa, 589 are in South Africa (SA). Across Tanzania, a country with nearly the same land mass and population as SA, there are only two large dams. Jonathan Lautze of Tufts University says, “If you look at all of Africa, disproportionate quantities of storage are destined for a few countries such as SA and Egypt. Generalized regional or continental figures may fail to fully reflect how dire the situation really is in many countries and how much potential for development there is.”
Southern-Africa and northern sub-Saharan Africa, in particular the strip across the continent along and north of the Sahel region in West Africa, suffers the most, says Giordano. But Nigeria is also having trouble meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (to ensure environmental sustainability, combat malaria, improve maternal health, reduce child mortality and eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.) Numerous water projects in the country had been abandoned, high levels of pollution are contaminating available and abundant surface water, rendering it undrinkable. And despite substantial revenue from energy reserves, Ethiopia, Angola, and Niger also suffer from water stress.
Experts opine that regardless of a country’s water abundance or scarcity, development is the only means to ease future water stress. According to Lautze, it was easier for him to take a shower in SA than Ethiopia, even though Ethiopia is one of the most water-abundant countries in Africa and SA one of the water-poorest. “Differences in natural water endowments may not be the major issue,” Lautze says. “This presence or absence of water development can be considered to affect water stress [rather] than natural constraints in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Experts say improving water and sanitation programmes is crucial to spurring growth and sustaining economic development. Because it takes time to develop these programs, a paradox emerges. Poor economies are unable to develop because of water stress and economic instability prohibits the development of programs to abate water stress. A 2005 report commissioned by the governments of Norway and Sweden showed that in Kenya, the 1999-2000 droughts produced a 16% decline in gross domestic product. Developments in water storage could have prevented that drought from significantly affecting the country’s economy. Hydropower can also spark economic development.
Agricultural development has the potential to improve African economies and address food scarcity, but requires extensive water supplies. Statistics from the Water Systems Analysis Group at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Ocean, and Space at the University of New Hampshire reveal the urgent need for sustainable agricultural development:
- About 64% of Africans rely on water which is limited and highly variable;
- Croplands inhabit the driest regions of Africa where 40% of the irrigated land is unsustainable;
- Roughly 25% of Africa’s population suffers from water stress and almost 13% of the population in Africa experiences drought-related stress once each generation.
With 96% of agriculture in Africa dependant on rain, soil nutrient depletion had become a more pressing problem than drought in sub-Saharan Africa. Development of soil nutrients is the most effective means to relieve agricultural water stress in the long-term, according to global experts.
Experts say regions suffering from water stress serve as catalysts for the spread of disease. In a global study conducted by the United Nations (UN), unsafe water is responsible for 80% of diseases and 30% of deaths in developing countries throughout the world. In Africa, which accounts for 90% of global cases of malaria, water stress plays an indirect role in malaria because it impedes the human recovery process.
Improved access to quality water is a long-term goal that requires more than humanitarian funds.
