Let's get some things straight

What do you think about regarding water and sanitation in Africa?

Let's start with water. Africa as a continent is often generalised as a place of water scarcity, however, there is a wide range in physical and human factors which has caused a differentiation in water access across the 46 countries. 

For instance, the Congo region (central Africa) alone has more renewable freshwater resources per capita than the USA! 

Moreover, Fela Kuti, a Nigerian music legend has drawn attention to water access through his lyrics; 

"there's water underground, water underground and water in the air... but look to your left, look to your right, you can't see it" . 

Some of you might be confused, maybe even shocked by these mind-boggling facts. In order to understand this, let's dive into a few of the juicy specifics of the physical reasons for this; groundwater storage. First, we need to understand how and what stores this water. The term you're looking for is an 'aquifer', effectively an underground storage tank (Gaye and Tindimugaya 2018). 

The map below shows the uneven distribution of groundwater where northern and parts of central Africa have 25,000 - 50,000mm of groundwater storage. This illustrates the large sedimentary aquifers in Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan. Furthermore, the Democratic Republic of Congo has a geology of unconsolidated sediments which are the most productive aquifers. Areas with a smaller groundwater reserve, shown in the southeast of the continent are generally those underlain by porous precambrian basement rocks.

 

Figure 1, sourced MacDonal et al 2012 

So there are definite water sources but why do people not have access to it?

Firstly, as the map shows, the groundwater is unequally spread across the continent and if used, is unable to actively recharge (Braune and Xu 2010).  Therefore, collecting rainfall as a resource might be a tempting solution, however, patterns vary spatially and temporally making it complicated (Taylor 2009). 

Human factors such as the incredibly large infrastructural challenge of connecting people to water is currently underway, for example, 60,000 hand pumps are currently built each year. But this doesn't mean they are effective in water provision long term which we will discuss in later weeks. Although the mentioned physical factors play a vital role, this blog will show how human factors are dominant in water accessibility across the African continent. 

These factors are estimated to have caused 320 million people to not have access to safe drinking water. What does this mean for sanitation access? 

Sanitation is defined by the WHO  as " the provision of facilities and services for the safe management of human excreta from the toilet to containment and storage and treatment onsite or conveyance, treatment and eventual safe end use or disposal." This includes a variety of strategies such as hygiene education programmes, the provision of flushing toilets and pit latrines. However, similar to water access, sanitation varies spatially and temporally and is "profoundly differentiated by relations such as ethnicity and region income" (McFarlane et al., 2014). The addition of public health into the keyword 'infrastructure' occurred in the 1970's. This was significant as infrastructure was and is considered an essential stepping stone for growth and modernity (Rankin 2009) and was funded by international organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.  However, arguably, sanitation was only really focused in global discussions in 2008, the International Year of Sanitation which consolidated it as essential for public health. Further progress is seen by the Sustainable Development Goal 6, established in 2015 to achieve universal access to sanitation. 

However, despite the movement, according to UNICEF, 70% of the population in eastern and southern Africa (340 million people) still have no access to basic sanitation services. They note that 98 million of this proportion practice open defecation. A problem because many rely on surface water for drinking water (due to the problems in water access mentioned earlier) which is susceptible to microbial contamination ( Damkjaer and Taylor 2017). Furthermore, consumption of faecal contaminated water has been significantly correlated with causing gastrointestinal illnesses, a major cause in infant mortality. 

Figure 2: source WHO and UNICEF 2017

These statistics and Figure 2 above hide the complicated human and physical factors contributing to the access which vary spatially across the continent. According to Jewitt (2011:608), 'taboos surrounding human waste have resulted in a lack of attention to spatial inequalities in access to sanitation,' which are not shown in the numerical statistics, nor are they often discussed by media. Jewitt (2011) redirects a focus to the distinct relations between governance, socio-economic and physical factors which can cause and create solutions to sanitation access. 

I think now would be a good time to reflect on the notion of sanitation. Colonial legacies sadly remain in notions of development, infrastructure and water and sanitation which have often opted for a one size fits all approach, under-appreciating contexts and cultural geographies. The next few weeks will examine these tactics which I will argue have led to the failure of the longevity of water and sanitation projects. 

Summary

Overall, when we talk about Africa having no water, we need to be more thoughtful, avoid stereotypes and instead, consider why might this be true?  Both human and physical factors have played a part in the disparity in water and sanitation access which this blog will investigate strategies to target this.  Furthermore, I will investigate current sanitation practice which uses Eurocentric colonial thought in order to show the lack of growth that has been caused.