By Sharon Atieno
With 17 major river basins, over 160 lakes and vast wetlands, Africa is endowed with abundant water resources, despite this, the continent remains water-stressed.
The Global Water Security 2023 Assessment released during the United Nations 2023 Water Conference, found that all African nations were “water insecure” accounting for nearly half of the 114 such nations in the world.
Three of the five “critically water insecure” countries in the world are in Africa – Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia. Africa accounts for 22 per cent (about 1.4 billion) of the world’s critically water insecure population. 13 African countries have been assessed to be in the critically insecure category.
“The current scarcity of water we see in our world is not so much about the lack of water resource, but about its mismanagement,” said Sunita Narain, Director General Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) during the unveiling of the Africa’s State of Environment 2024 report in Nairobi, Kenya.
“We are water stressed not because it doesn’t rain or we don’t have water in our rivers but because of the way we are managing it.”
According to CSE’s report, water security is not just about how much natural water a country has but also how well the resources are managed.
A case in point is the Democratic Republic of Congo, which the World Bank estimates has over 50 per cent of Africa’s surface water reserves and approximately one in four of the continent’s water resources. The Congo River Basin – Africa’s largest river by volume having a consistent flow throughout the year – covers 98 per cent of the country.
But the report notes that despite this overwhelming natural endowment of water, nearly three in four of Congo’s 70 million citizens don’t have access to safe drinking water. This is below Sub-Saharan Africa’s average of half of the population having access to safe drinking water.
“Two major discontinuities have emerged worldwide in water management since the 19th century. One, the State has emerged as the major provider of water replacing communities and households as the primary units for provision and management of water,” the State of Africa’s Environment 2024 report reads.
“Two, there has been growing reliance on the use of surface and groundwater, while the earlier reliance on rainwater and floodwater has declined, even though rainwater and floodwater are available in much greater abundance than river water or groundwater.”
With climate change already adding to the water stress and set to make the situation worse in the coming years, the CSE report recommends water harvesting and integrated land-water management.
“The art and science of “collecting water where it falls” is ancient but this “dying wisdom” needs to be revived to meet modern freshwater needs adequately, equitably and sustainably and modernized with inputs from science and technology,” the report reads.
Rainwater harvesting, the report observes, can not only provide a source of water to increase water supplies but also involve the public in water management, making water management everybody’s business.
It will also reduce the current demand on government institutions to meet water needs, reduce the need for government subsidies, and help everyone to internalize the full costs of their water requirements, thus encouraging the public to be more conserving in its water demand.
“Community control and participation is essential for any strategy that seeks to use
and manage local water resources. But this participation is not possible unless a community-based institutional framework for natural resource governance is developed,” the report notes.
According to Narain, to meet future water demands, there is need to augment supply. This calls for focusing on rainwater harvesting to mitigate flood risk and recharge groundwater. This will build resilience of rural communities to deal with variable rain and for cities to deal with water stress.
Additionally, there is need to manage water demand so that water is used efficiently while minimizing pollution by ensuring that water is not degraded and unusable. Every drop of waste water must be reused and recycled, she urged.
