Child defecating in a canal in the slum of Gege in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria. Credit: Adebayo Alao, Sept. 2007/cc by 2.0

By Clinton Ikechukwu Ezeigwe
OWERRI, Nigeria, Mar 22 2015 (IPS)

In Nigeria, it’s all about the numbers. My nation recently became the largest economy in Africa by some distance, with a GDP of well over 500 billion dollars.

At the same time, 63.2 million people don’t have access to safe water, and over 112 million people – two thirds of the population – don’t have access to adequate sanitation. This figure has risen since 1990.It’s clear that water and sanitation problems are symptoms of wider issues that are at stake for a secure, healthy future of Nigeria.

The ongoing conflict with Boko Haram militants in the north of the country killed well over 6,000 civilians in 2014. An extremely serious figure for sure, but by way of some perspective, every year, 97,000 children die in the country as a whole from diarrhoea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. It really drives home the reality of a simpler crisis on our doorstep.

There is both a North-South and rural-urban divide in this respect, and in the wider issue of reducing the serious poverty gap. Poverty in rural areas (44.9 per cent) is far greater than in urban areas (12.6 per cent) and the methods of poverty reduction in the cities are much more established, and therefore stronger.

It’s clear that water and sanitation problems are symptoms of wider issues that are at stake for a secure, healthy future of Nigeria. Getting much greater access to water and sanitation in underserved areas is only the first step – it’s got to be of acceptable quality and affordable for citizens.

All this requires serious civic engagement. My organisation is a vocal advocate for marginalised groups – and is gaining some ground. But it has not been easy.

Our previous campaigning work in Imo State – an area with one of the biggest water and sanitation crises in Nigeria – has been met with minimal success. In recent times the state wanted to deliver the water services through a private and public partnership, which did not materialise. This meant access to water and sanitation remained poor in both rural and urban areas.

In the last week, we finally made a breakthrough; succeeding in securing a political advocacy with our governor in Imo State and the Commissioner for Public Utilities and Rural Development, in charge of water in the state.

We intend to bolster this advocacy work by taking to the streets in the World Walks for Water and Sanitation. It’s the ideal opportunity to keep the pressure on, and 2,000 people are marching in our area calling on leaders to keep their promises. Indeed, plenty of them have been made.

Nigerian officials attended the Sanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting in Washington DC in April last year, making a promise to bring safe water, basic toilets and hygiene in the next 11 years.

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) come to an end, to be replaced by the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it’s a pivotal time to make these vows credible.

At the national level, there needs to be a dedicated budget for tackling the water and sanitation crisis in the country.

We also call for improved accountability, and an acceptance of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation at the heart of efforts to reduce inequalities and bring acceptable, hygienic and appropriate facilities to all. Special considerations need to be given to rural and isolated populations.

Our leaders have come to understand the importance of the wider importance of water and sanitation – increased access to education, job opportunities and a chance for many to break the poverty cycle to name but a few – and this no doubt represents progress. There are signs of practical action, too.

Earlier this month, the Federal Government’s Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Ministry, Dr Steve Oru, made commitments to bring water supply to some communities in Imo State and others in the Niger Delta – acknowledging problems accessing these basic needs as a “tragedy.”

That it certainly is – but while these latest moves are promising, it has to be just the start of a deeper commitment to this human right being realised.

It’s certainly not the time for short-term ‘solutions’ that cover up the true nature of the problem. In another interesting statistic, 48 per cent of households across the whole of the country are dependent on sachet water, according to a very recent survey. Clearly, there’s a long way to go.

Nigeria may be the 26th largest economy in the world – but national economic health needs to lead to a healthy state. Tackling the chronic shortfall in water and sanitation facilities would go a long way to ensuring the basic rights and needs of Nigerian people are addressed.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

U.S. officials Tuesday formally unveiled the government’s first comprehensive strategy aimed at integrating water into all U.S. development funding and programmes, a step long urged by advocates and development experts.

Piped water has made life easier for this Laotian boy, who no longer has to help his parents fetch water from afar. Credit:Vannaphone Sitthirath/IPS

Civil society groups are expressing excitement over the scope and strength of the new strategy, dubbing it a “major advance”. But many are also calling on lawmakers to ensure that, during the coming implementation phase, U.S. aid is targeted primarily at the poorest communities in developing and middle-income countries.

“Achieving water security for regions, nations, and individuals is one of the greatest development challenges confronting the world today,” the new Water and Development Strategy, released Tuesday by USAID, the country’s main foreign aid arm, states. “By its nature, as a basic and essential resource, water considerations cut across nearly every aspect of USAID programming.”

Yet because of this cross-cutting nature – the new document covers both the human and agricultural uses of water – the new strategy was a very long time coming, requiring input and agreement from a vast number of government agencies and stakeholders.

“It is kind of astounding that this is the U.S. government’s first such strategy, though it is something that many groups have long been advocating for,” Alanna Imbach, media officer with WaterAid America, a global advocacy and implementing group, told IPS.

“For many years in development work, water, sanitation and hygiene have been a bit forgotten. Instead, significant focus has been placed on education, maternal health and nutrition, overlooking the fact that water and sanitation are foundational building blocks for all of those other elements. So it’s now urgent that we get this right first and then the others will fall into place.”

Indeed, the ongoing impact of these issues remains incredibly wide. According to the United Nations, in developing countries, around 2,000 children are estimated to die every day from water-borne diseases, overwhelmingly from diarrhoea due to bad drinking water, poor sanitation and inadequate hygiene.

Every year, around 2.5 billion such cases are recorded among young children alone, and the knock-on effects are vast.

“We know that every dollar we invest in clean water and basic sanitation yields eight dollars in benefits,” Dick Durbin, a U.S. senator who has championed related legislation, said Tuesday at the public unveiling of the new strategy. “People are healthier, kids stay in school, food is safer, AIDS drugs and other critical health treatments are able to work.”

In fact, international recognition of this centrality has led to some initial global success: the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halve the proportion of those without access to clean drinking water was met in 2010, five years early.

Yet another MDG to similarly cut the number of those without access to basic sanitation remains outstanding, and the United Nations says the world will not likely achieve this goal by 2015. According to USAID, some 40 percent of the world continues to use unsafe toilets – when they have toilets at all.

Advocates say it is critical that the new USAID strategy will attempt simultaneously to tackle both water and sanitation-related issues. Setting out a plan for the next five years, the aim is to provide at least 10 million people with “sustainable access” to an improved water supply and six million people with access to improved sanitation during that period.

Notably, the plan puts into action new USAID guidance to emphasise local ownership and sustainability of U.S.-funded aid projects, while offering greatly expanded flexibility on how that funding is to be used.

“What’s great about this strategy is that it opens up space for creative programming in water development,” Ned Breslin, CEO of Water For People, a humanitarian group, told IPS. “It’s a huge step forward.”

Strategic considerations

The United States already has in place one piece of legislation requiring that water and sanitation be a central priority for U.S. foreign funding, known as the Water for the Poor Act, passed in 2005. Further, that law also requires that water and sanitation-related aid be centred on countries that have the least access to those services, with the aim of having the greatest possible impact on other development goals.

Yet policymakers have never followed up to define an implementation plan for this goal, as mandated by the Water for the Poor Act. And while the new USAID strategy is not that implementation plan, observers are now planning to push lawmakers to ensure that the new strategy is closely aligned with the objectives of the 2005 legislation.

Indeed, the strategy itself stipulates that USAID will advance programmes “consistent” with that law, “including establishing criteria to designate high priority countries for increased investments”.

Yet much of the language in the strategy also contextualises water within a fast-strengthening narrative of national security, in line with a major report last year from the U.S. intelligence community that identified water security as a primary threat to U.S. interests in coming decades.

As such, the strategy mandates focusing new water and sanitation emphasis on countries for three reasons, one of which is “strategic considerations”.

“My concern is what the balance is going to be here – I’d like to see the vast majority of these funds going to countries and communities where water and sanitation access levels are under 75 percent, rather than to those countries where significant access already exists,” John Oldfield, CEO of WASH Advocates, a Washington advocacy group on issues of water and sanitation, told IPS.

“Plus, you can’t forget about the poor communities in middle-income countries. The new strategy can be very pro-poor, depending on how one interprets it, but these are issues on which we need to continue to work with USAID.”

WaterAid’s Imbach has similar concerns, warning that the strategy currently allows for a “fair proportion of funds” to go to countries of strategic importance. She says her office is now looking to Congressional leaders to ensure accountability to the poor.

One such opportunity could be quickly approaching, with lawmakers preparing to re-introduce a bill called the Water for the World Act, an earlier version of which was defeated in 2010. That legislation would “offer an opportunity to ensure that those most in need are benefiting from U.S.-funded water and sanitation funding,” Imbach says.

The Water for the World Act could be re-introduced as early as next month.

Women and children in Zimbabwe queue for hours to fetch water from boreholes. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Stanley Kwenda
HARARE, Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

For three weeks Tavonga Kwidini and his wife Maria had no tap water in their home in Glen View, one of the many dry suburbs in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

The couple was just about at the end of their tether when heavy rains came like a gift from the heavens.

“We now harvest rainwater and that’s what we use to bathe, drink and flush our toilets,” Kwidini told IPS as he lined up his buckets underneath the roof of his house in anticipation of the January showers.

Such has been his life since the second week of December 2012, which was the last time he had tap water. Surprisingly, he still receives the council water bill averaging around 80 dollars every month.

“Water problems are not new here — in 2008 some of my neighbours died of cholera because of these shortages but the (city) council is not doing anything to make sure that we have safe household water,” according to Kwidini.

U.N. assistance still needed

In the past the problem was largely blamed on shortages of water treatment chemicals, but for nearly half a decade this excuse has been inadequate, as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) provided these chemicals to the country’s 20 urban councils free of charge.

U.N. assistance came in response to Zimbabwe’s 2008 cholera epidemic that killed about 4,000 people. It was not until last April, when local authorities indicated that the situation was under control, that UNICEF discontinued its support, according to UNICEF Chief Communications Officer Micaela Marques de Sousa.

However, experts and locals agree that the current status quo might force the aid agency to rethink its position, given that access to safe water is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), whose 2015 target is fast approaching.

Until the UNICEF Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme withdrew in 2008 the situation had improved visibly, with greater numbers of people in Zimbabwe’s 20 urban centres able to access safe water and sanitation services.

Now it is common to see many people in urban Zimbabwe carrying buckets and walking in search of water, a sight that had hitherto been limited to rural areas.

“We have no option but to move from one area to the next in search of boreholes with clean water. These days we are lucky because of the rains, otherwise I would be carrying a 20-litre bucket to my work place to bring drinking water home,” said Kwidini, who works at a wholesale shop in central Harare.

Residents seek alternatives

As with many crises, women and children are shouldering the lion’s share of the burden.

Women who have now resorted to doing their washing in water bodies that are often used as dumping areas by industrial companies are vulnerable to several health hazards.

Meanwhile, children are being forced into the role of “water bearer”.

“My day starts at five a.m. as I join a queue at the local borehole to get bath water for my father, myself and for household use,” fourteen-year-old Thelma told IPS.

Like many of her peers Thelma has to join the long water line early or else she will be late for school.

The number of functioning boreholes is inadequate to service the urban population, and when they break down – a common occurrence – they are often left in a state of disrepair.

A borehole at the Tichagarika Shopping Centre in Glen View suburb, which serviced hundreds of residents, broke down in June last year and remained dormant until its components were stolen.

The government assisted Harare in sinking 250 boreholes across the capital but residents say most of these have either broken down or only provide contaminated water.

According to the Health and Child Welfare Ministry’s disease monitoring report, an estimated 50 typhoid cases are reported each day in Harare and its satellite towns. Roughly 500,000 people in Zimbabwe suffered from diarrhoea in 2012; of these, 460,000 were serious cases and 281 were fatal.

Statistics from an advocacy group, the Harare Residents Trust (HRT), suggest that only 192,000 households in Harare, a city of two million people, are connected to the water system, while the rest depend on boreholes or rainwater.

To make matters worse HRT says the city is losing 60 percent of its treated water to leakages in the old infrastructure. Harare needs 1,300 mega litres of water daily but the current supply per day ranges from 600-700 mega litres, approximately half of the demand.

On top of this, Zimbabwe spends 27 million dollars a month to treat the water supply.

HRT Director Precious Shumba told IPS that the problems facing the city are a sign of local councils’ failure to adequately provide its residents with the most basic services.

“We are most disappointed with the level of service provision — the quality is atrocious and residents are complaining of stomachaches and diarrhoeal diseases like typhoid. Most of the time, the water coming out of taps is smelly and has visible impurities,” said Shumba.

“In areas like Crowborough, Dzivarasekwa and Glen Norah, Budiriro, residents have witnessed sadza (cooked cornmeal) and vegetable particles flowing out of their taps, raising genuine fears of the safety and sustainably of this water for human consumption,” Shumba added.

A recent study from the University of Zimbabwe indicated that one in every 1,000 people in the capital is at risk of developing colon or liver cancer due to continuous consumption of unsafe water pumped from polluted sources.

Christopher Zvobgo, a Harare city engineer, strongly disputed these findings, though he admitted that the city undoubtedly faces water-related challenges.

“We test water on a daily basis and we take samples from different points. Every month we send (the samples) to two independent laboratories for testing and they meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard,” he said adding that the biggest problem lies in the aged water infrastructure.

But back in Glen View, residents like Alois Chidoda and his children are forced to rely on boreholes because the water coming out of their tap is “brown in colour” and simply not fit for consumption, he told IPS.

“Using it will be inviting disease,” Chidoda added.

President of the Urban Councils Association of Zimbabwe (UCAZ), Femias Chakabuda, blames the water shortages in the country’s urban areas on mounting government debts.

“The problem is our government wants to use water for free. That makes it impossible for us to repair water infrastructure and pay our own service providers,” he told IPS, adding that the government currently owes Harare City Council over 10 million dollars, Masvingo City Council over seven million dollars and Bulawayo City Council four million dollars in back-payment for water services.