Rural Water and Sanitation in Africa
Nowadays,
unequaled and inadequate access to water is a real problem concerning
millions of people through the world. Poverty is one of the
consequences resulting from this inadequate access to water and it
has impact on health, food security and livelihood.
In
Africa, only 58 % of the total population has access to drinking
water. By 2025, prognostics forecast that 230 million of the African
population will be living in scarce areas that is < 1,000 cubic
meters water/capita/year and around 430 million of the population
will be living in stressed areas that is 1, 000-1,700 cubic meters
water/capita/years. Because of this, Africa has to
manage its water in a context of growing population and increasing
demand on water supplies in agriculture. Indeed, agriculture
represents 85% of the total amount of used water, domestic water
represents 13% and industry 4%.
Moreover, the
rainfall in Africa is around 670 mm per year like in Europe and in
North America however, evaporation rates are resulting in
substantially lower percentages of precipitation contributing to
renewable water resources.
The
continent has got seventeen rivers with catchments areas greater than
100 000 km2 and more than 160 lakes larger than 27 km2. Today, water
basins are international and have to be sharing between countries.
Groundwater is very important in Africa with around 40% of the
population that use it as the main source of drinking water.
Access to clean water and sanitation is the most crucial challenge for Africa in a context of increasing water scarcity.
Thanks for the start to this blog, and setting out some of the physical challenges to water provision in the African continent. I would recommend that you continue working on this, as I would have hoped to see a few more posts from you at this point! You have done a nice job outlining a series of statistics to support your argument, which is very convincing, however, I would also recommend that you stay consistent with referencing to further support your claims. It might also we worthwhile to keep in mind that physical scarcity represents just one reason for the water crisis, and there may be other factors which impact distribution...
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