Clean water is a missing element in Africa

In North America, we have taken clean water for granted until recent events in Flint, Michigan, and East Palestine, Ohio, brought into question the safety of the water available to be used. Periodic droughts also have limited the availability of clean water, but in developed countries, such incidents and concerns about clean water are either isolated or transitory.

In developed countries such as the United States and Canada, it is widely understood that clean water is a vital resource with numerous benefits beyond hydration: it drives out toxins in the system, it improves brain function, it boosts the immune system and it eliminates fatigue, among other positive benefits.

For the most part, voters in developed countries make sure that essentials like clean water are provided by elected officials and the bureaucracies they manage. Such is not the case in many developing countries such as in Africa.

According to a fact sheet produced by the World Health Organization (WHO), access to water has improved worldwide in the last few decades. An estimated 2.6 billion people have gained access to an improved drinking-water source since 1990, and 4.2 billion people are now believed to get water through a piped connection. In addition, 2.4 billion have access to water through other improved sources including public taps, protected wells and boreholes.

However, WHO finds that 663 million people rely on unimproved sources, including 159 million people dependent on surface water. Globally, at least 1.8 billion people use a drinking-water source contaminated with human waste. Contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio, and contaminated drinking-water is estimated to cause 502,000 diarrheal deaths each year.

When I worked for the House Subcommittee on Africa, we held several hearings on water availability. We heard from witnesses who told of people who had become accustomed to drinking contaminated water because that was all they had ever known. In one case, a witness told us that he had come to a village to dig a borehole, and in gratitude, the villagers gave him a glass of water in which he could see parasites at the bottom of the glass.

In that same hearing, I remember seeing a group of children playing barefoot in contaminated water and thinking they may have been getting infected with the same parasites in the very photo we were using to promote strategies to end people using contaminated water.

By 2025, WHO predicts that half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.

WHO reports that in low- and middle-income countries, 38 percent of health care facilities lack improved water source, 19 percent do not have improved sanitation and 35 percent lack water and soap for handwashing. Without consistent supplies of clean water, how can developing countries successfully fight off diseases, many of which originate outside the continent?

When water comes from improved and more accessible sources, the WHO finds, people spend less time and effort in physically collecting it, meaning they can be productive in other ways. It can also result in greater personal safety by reducing the need to make long or risky journeys to collect water. Many women and girls, who largely are tasked with finding and carrying water home to their families, are often assaulted during this journey. Better water sources also mean less expenditure on health, as people are less likely to fall ill and incur medical costs and are better able to remain economically productive.

With children particularly at risk from water-related diseases, access to improved sources of water can result in better health and therefore better school attendance, with longer-term positive or negative consequences for their lives.

So, it is no wonder that efforts to diminish the amount of water nations have available will be resisted – perhaps even with military conflict.

In addition to using water for drinking, cooking, bathing and other household uses, as well as its impact on education, water is essential for agricultural purposes. According to the Water Footprint Network, a platform for collaboration between companies, organizations and individuals to solve the world’s water crises, agriculture is the largest consumer of water in sub-Saharan Africa and a rapidly rising population is increasing food demand and water scarcity.

Staple food and export crops are often produced inefficiently, consuming more water resources and getting less yield than the global benchmark for these crops. In Africa, it is estimated that the vast majority (85 percent) of the water used is used for agricultural purposes. Another 10 percent of the water is used in the household, and the remaining 5 percent is used in industry.

Water wars loom

So, it is no wonder that efforts to diminish the amount of water nations have available will be resisted – perhaps even with military conflict. For example, Egypt’s population is predicted to reach 98.7 million by 2025, further increasing the competition for water in that region. Developments in Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries in that part of eastern Africa could impact water availability to Egypt.

The United Nations predicts that Egypt could be water scarce by 2025. Assuming continued population growth and considering the land reclamation projects in the desert and the fact that more than 50 percent of the cereals consumed are already imported, Egypt will not be able to meet its food demand by relying on Nile water for irrigation. Adding to this precarious situation, surface water evaporation in Lake Nasser is thought to exceed the earlier estimated amount. The current average evaporation rate is 7 mm and it is expected to be 7.3 mm by 2050. In other words, Egypt is already utilizing most of the Nile’s flow, and it plans to use even more of a diminishing amount.

In recent years, The Economist magazine has reported that Egypt’s water supply has been threatened by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The construction of the GERD on the Nile, at a cost of US$5 billion, has sparked a quarrel between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. This dam will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric-power project once fully operational later this decade.

Located on the Blue Nile in northern Ethiopia, upstream from Egypt and Sudan, it will produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity, twice as much as Ethiopia’s entire current output. Even though the dam could give the region a big economic boost, officials from the three countries have failed to strike a deal on how it will be operated. And the Egyptian government at one point even considered bombing it.

The Nile Waters Agreements of 1929 and 1959, created under colonialism, granted Egypt and Sudan the right to use all of the water between them and gave Egypt the right of veto over upstream construction projects. Ethiopia, which was left out of the agreements, does not recognize them. Moreover, with Sudan now split into the Republic of the Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan, the allocation of Nile water between these two countries also is unresolved, although South Sudan does already possess significant water resources.

Water conflicts are not limited to the Nile water either. For example, Cameroon experienced a violent dispute over water between fishermen and herders in a town near the border of Chad in December 2021. The disagreement over rights to water found in a shrinking Lake Chad led to the death of 22 people and a further 100,000 people displaced from their homes as the two groups fought in 2019. The Niger Delta has experienced conflict over pollution of water from petroleum runoff over an extended period.

“Once conflicts escalate, they are hard to resolve and can have a negative impact on water security, creating vicious cycles of conflict,” Susanne Schmeier, senior lecturer in water law and diplomacy at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, told the Down to Earth website.

With all the existing and pending conflicts concerning natural resources such as minerals and land, water-based conflicts will only add to growing chaos in which governments are being replaced by coups at an alarming rate.

Given that in less than two years half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas, the WHO recommends that re-use of wastewater, to recover water, nutrients, or energy, should become an important strategy. Increasingly countries are using wastewater for irrigation – in developing countries this represents 7 percent of irrigated land. While this practice, if done inappropriately, poses health risks, safe management of wastewater can yield multiple benefits, including increased food production. Island nations such as Cape Verde have investigated the widespread use of desalinization to enable use of salty seawater.

Options for water sources used for drinking-water and irrigation will continue to evolve, the WHO predicts, with an increasing reliance on groundwater and alternative sources, including wastewater. Climate change will lead to greater fluctuations in harvested rainwater. The management of all water resources will need to be improved to ensure provision and quality.

Time is running out to solve the problem of scarcity of clean water and sufficient water to use for agricultural purposes. Water wars are even now revving up, and action must be taken to forestall these conflicts before they start.

Gregory Simpkins, a longtime specialist in African policy development, is the Principal of 21st Century Solutions. He consults with organizations on African policy issues generally, especially in relating to the U.S. Government. He further acts as a consultant to the African Merchants Association, where he advises the Association in its efforts to stimulate an increase in trade between several hundred African Diaspora small and medium enterprises and their African partners.