WASHin' Africa

Welcome to my final blog! throughout this series of blogs, I delved into the different WASH challenges Africa faces. In this final blog, I will provide a summary of the water and sanitation story so far and look at what COP27 has for the future of WASH Africa. Currently... Climate change has great impacts on water networks all around the world (UNICEF, 2022) . Climate change creates unusual weather patterns and extreme weather events, causing unprecedented fluctuations in water availability. These impacts affect the quality of life for many around the world, and the poorest communities are usually the most vulnerable and most affected (Bharadwaj et al., 2022) . Between 2001 and 1018, around 74% of natural disasters were water-related (Lee et al., 2020) . These events damage water supply networks which also affects sanitation. Water stress will only worsen as climate change continues, and it is estimated that by 2040, almost 1 in 4 children will live in areas of extreme water stress (UN...

The topic of water and sanitation brings together not only in theory but also in practice people from both private and public sectors. Urban sanitation and its challenges are extremely complex. Poor and inadequate sanitation causes an annual economic loss between 1 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP for 18 African countries (World Bank, 2022 ). This shows governments that these costs must be addressed for the country to grow sustainably, hence, it proves how inextricably tied water and sanitation challenges are to political and socio-economic factors. Poo power & Sani-preneurs 'Flying toilets' are bags of human feces that fill the streets of Nairobi's slums. They are the products of a serious shortage of sanitation services and proper sewage systems. In recent years, these sanitation problems have gained attention in private sectors attracting entrepreneurial approaches to solutions and birthed 'sani-preneur' initiatives (EY, 2020) . Dealing with Kibera's flying...

UN SDG 6 which focuses on ensuring access to water and sanitation for all has been mentioned a few times in my previous blogs. Target 6.2 specifically says 'by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.  In many societies across the world, women have primary responsibilities in household management which include the management of household water supply and sanitation (UN, 2006) . Despite women being very knowledgeable and important in the actions revolving around water and sanitation management, they are often under-represented in decision-making roles ( Kameri-Mbote, 2006 ; ADB, 2006 ). In the case of Kenya, only an average of 37% of top-level staff were women across six national and county sanitation-related institutions (WSUP, 2020) . WaterAid Explains: What has water got to do with gender equality? Feminine realities of WASH ...

In the last blog, I explored the challenges Physical Landscape brings to WASH. Today, I will explore an equally important determinant of successful WASH conditions: Human Landscape. Both the politics of water and sanitation are important and must be seen together because they are closely linked. The supply of water directly affects the level of sanitation, and the level of sanitation determines the amount of uncontaminated water (WHO, 2022) . The inequalities of WASH Unsurprisingly, not only are there uneven distributions of water in terms of quantity but there are also inequalities in the quality of water because of marginalization in the management of water. A case study done on the inequalities in microbial contamination of drinking water supplies in urban areas in Lilongwe, Malawi reveals that there is a stark difference in water quality between higher-income (planned areas) and low-income neighborhoods (unplanned areas)  (Boakye-Ansh et al. 2016) . A statistically significant ...

There are 5 main challenges of WASH, and today we will delve into one very important one: Physical Landscape. As mentioned in my previous blog, a safe WASH condition is essential for human health and plays a key role in building up livelihoods including adequate sanitation and creating sustainable economies and healthy environments. Physical Landscape Fig 1.  Annual movement of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) Africa is the world's second-driest continent besides Australia (UN, 2014) . The distribution of freshwater in Africa is highly uneven across regions, mostly because of the variability of rainfall in different climatic zones. Precipitation patterns are directly linked to the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) . The ITCZ's position changes throughout the year and in Africa, it migrates latitudinally on a seasonal basis creating the annual alteration of wet and dry seasons in Africa. Watch this video: Explaining the ITCZ in Africa Physical water scarcity in Afri...