Africa risks non-attainment of the MDGs on water

By Ebenezer Hanson

It has emerged that unless African countries invest massively in the water supply industry, and policy makers get their acts together, the vision of attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of water would become a pipedream.

“Africa was chosen as the venue for the forum because the continent is at risk of not attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015,” Mr. Pierre Cross, Chairperson of Rural Water Supply Network (RWNS), told stakeholders in the water industry at the four-day 5th International RWSN forum which ended in Accra at the weekend.

According to the Africa regional report titled “Water Resources Development in Africa” submitted at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico in March this year, the Continent would need about $20 billion annually to meet the Africa Water Vision 2025.

The Forum under the theme: “Scaling Up Local Entrepreneurship to Meet the Millennium Development Goals” and brought together about 300 participants from across the world.

Access to potable water means good and sound health, and the fourth, fifth and sixth MDGs all border on health. MDG four states to “ reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under five”; MDG five, to “reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio and MDG six, to “halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other related diseases”. It was against this backdrop that the forum was organised under three flagship areas: Cost Effective Boreholes, Sustainable Hand Pumps and Self Supply.

Mr. Cross observed that despite the breakthroughs and advances in medicine, communication and technology, etc, the world has not been able to supply water enough to the rural poor, a situation which he attributed to less political influence wielded by the unfortunate rural folks.

“ Rural communities have less political influence and therefore investment to are skewed to their disadvantage, ” submitted Mr. Cross.


The Africa Development Bank Report on Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative, Framework for Implementation, reports that the continent has the lowest water supply coverage than any region of the world.

The Report states that about 300 million Africans have no access to safe water and about 313 million lack access to adequate sanitation. The picture on country by country is even more worrying and this exacts a heavy toll on the health and economic progress of African countries.

The RWNS is a global knowledge network that promotes sound practices in rural water supply. RWNS evolved from the Hand Pump Technology (HTN) and uncovers good practices, provides tools, promotes innovation and triggers processes, which improve the application of affordable and appropriate water supply technologies for rural communities.


The thematic focus of the Forum was about (small scale) private sector involvement in rural water supply with emphasis on the potential that “self supply”can provide to generate a market big enough to sustain service provision through local private entrepreneurs. The Forum also looked at how interaction between households, small community groups and local authorities could lead to improved service levels.

The Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, disclosed that Ghana has targeted 73 percent coverage of water supply before it can meet the MDGs. However, the country’s target under the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy-II (GPRS II) is put at 85 percent, much more ambitious than that for the MDG.

“This higher coverage figure translates to an annual investment of about $150 million for the whole sector, that is, urban and rural. This obviously is a huge amount for the government alone to bear and welcomes assistance towards meeting this challenge,” the Minister revealed.

He associated himself with the call to those in the drilling of boreholes to employ simple and less sophisticated equipment since that could drastically reduce the unit cost for boreholes and increase the coverage at less cost.
For most governments in the developing world, one of the most worrying areas in their attempt to provide potable water to their peoples is the relatively high cost of drilling. It is believed that this is caused mainly by the use of expensive drilling equipment for the nature and quantity of work they carry out thereby defeating the benefits that would normally accrue from economic scale, he further disclosed.

Mr. Owusu-Agyemang had a word of caution for the participants regarding the Self Supply concept of providing water and that was to “ avoid a situation where in our anxiety to increase the supply of water we don’t leave behind areas of potential health problems ”.

Referring to the 2006 Human Development Report of the UNDP, which he launched recently, Mr. Owusu-Agyemang said the Report, which focused on water and sanitation, categorically states that “safe water and sanitation can make or break human development.”

The Report also provides some worrying and disheartening statistics: millions of women spend up to four hours a day collecting water; poor water and sanitation is the cause of more than 50 percent of the common ailments in developing countries.

For the way forward, the Report recommends, among other things, that water should be made a human right and that means a minimum of 20 litres for all, develop strong national strategies for water and sanitation and build partnership for water and sanitation around a Global Action Plan--similar to the models used for HIV/AIDS.

Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin II, who chaired the opening ceremony, shared the sentiments expressed by Mr. Cross that notwithstanding the progress made by humanity, people are still dying because of their place birth—Africa. “Poverty in this part of the world is one without option”

He said 2.3 billion people go to bed without clean glass water and he finds it totally unacceptable. To strongly drive home his point, he displayed a bottle of coloured water, which he said that is quality of water drank by many a folk in rural communities.

He regretted a very pitiful sight he encountered when he traveled to northern part of Ghana, he found out that both donkeys and human beings drunk from the same source of water, a situation which he said should propel all stakeholders to work towards the improving the accessibility of all to potable water.