Securing Africa’s
Future Water Needs

Pillar 1:

Infrastructure

Sustainable infrastructure represents the backbone of resilient water systems. Ponds, tanks, and dams collect and store water supplies for users. Treatment plants and protected wells ensure water quality. Canals, pumping stations, and pipe networks distribute water to households, agriculture, and industry. Sewage and drainage networks carry away stormwater and waste. Reservoirs, barrages, and irrigation schemes protect communities and crops from droughts and floods.

Yet much of sub-Saharan Africa lacks vital water infrastructure. Nearly one-third of the population lives without basic drinking water services—water from an improved source, such as piped water or a protected well, within a 30-minute round trip from their home. Across the continent, available water storage amounts to some 200 cubic meters per person, far below global averages. Only 5-6 percent of sub-Saharan agriculture is irrigated.

Critically, less than 10 percent of wastewater is treated before being dumped directly into the environment. Agricultural runoff, household waste, and industrial contaminants make many water sources dangerous for other users. Children are particularly at risk because of their early stage of development.

Much infrastructure development, however, struggles under a costly and wasteful cycle of build, neglect, and rebuild. The installation of hand pumps, for example, has expanded the physical infrastructure for water access in many countries. But  sub-standard construction quality and lack of maintenance contribute to render one-quarter of hand pumps in sub-Saharan Africa inoperative at any given time. Up to 40 percent of new rural water points in some states fail within two years.

Ensuring long-term water security requires strengthening capacities and resources to supply and maintain essential water infrastructure.

Pillar 2:

Investment

Building, operating, and maintaining sustainable water service systems demands significant financial resources. The African Ministers’ Council on Water calculates that meeting Sub-Saharan Africa’s water and sanitation needs requires annual spending of 11.4 billion dollars, triple the amount of current investment. 

Yet across the region, financing for the water sector is often deficient, fragmented, and difficult to sustain over time. 

Public budgets funding water services through taxes and tariffs are small and declining, as governments tend to prioritize other sectors. Official development assistance (ODA), the second-largest source of water sector funding for the region, is also falling. Additionally, ODA flows exhibit considerable regional and economic inequities, concentrating on large projects in a handful of states.

Few utilities in the region generate enough revenue to cover their operating costs, much less expand services. Funding constraints push many providers to scrimp on proper management, staffing, maintenance, and repair. Mismanagement and disrepair exacerbate system losses to leaking pipes, defective meters, and theft. Such “non-revenue water” losses can swallow 30 to 90 percent of regional utilities’ water provision. Leaks and service disruptions in turn drive consumers to halt tariff payments or abandon service providers for alternative water sources, further sapping the sector’s financial resources.

The private sector represents an important potential source of finance but faces challenges. Water projects typically require significant upfront outlays, while the returns can be difficult to quantify and are often spread out over long payback periods. This makes water infrastructure hard to value and hard to monetize, deterring investment.

Yet reliable and resilient water systems generate tremendous societal and economic benefit.

These systems deliver up to seven dollars in returns for each dollar spent, in the form of employment opportunities, protection from disasters, and public health improvements.

Securing these benefits and strengthening societal water resilience requires attracting increased investment for water infrastructure projects. Implementing models for sustainable funding, operations, monitoring, and maintenance for reliable service delivery over systems’ lifetimes will also be important.

Pillar 3:

Information

Managing complex water security risks depends on accurate, timely, and consistent information to guide policymaking, implementation, and evaluation. Good data on water availability, water quality, and water uses can identify emerging needs and vulnerable populations. Analyses of weather patterns and infrastructure capacities can inform early warning systems for water-related disasters.

Much of sub-Saharan Africa, however, suffers from a comparative lack of detailed and accessible water data. Advances in multiple practices and technologies, such as household surveys and satellite remote sensing, offer significant new opportunities to enhance systematic data collection and fill gaps in areas with sparse in-situ monitoring capacities. 

African policymakers recognize a lack of adequate data as a significant obstacle to achieving water security goals. Improving and ensuring the collection and application of such information streams will demand increased capacity building in national water and weather services. Strengthened collaboration among data providers and end users, and defined responsibilities and policies for data access and dissemination, will also be essential.

Pillar 4:

Institutions

Institutions manage water policy and decisionmaking. They build and operate infrastructure, collect and analyze information, and mobilize and allocate financial resources.

Water governance is a complex process in all countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, most water systems are managed by a mix of national, subnational, and local government institutions overseeing public utilities, traditional authorities or community-based management, and private sector actors.

The responsibility for managing water provision often falls upon complex institutional structures composed of multiple organizations, processes, and functions. This involves prioritizing and assigning roles, resources, and objectives across sectors, stakeholders, and scales.

But institutions managing watersheds, river basins, or groundwater aquifers do not typically align with the political boundaries of communities, countries, and government departments. Different ministries and authorities can have differing mandates for managing different water uses for agriculture, energy, or industry. Responsibilities and accountability can be overlapping, unclear, or contested, contributing to siloed policies and governance gaps.

Lack of coordination across differing scales, types of water use, and levels of governance can undermine resilience and generate adverse outcomes. In Ghana, for example, drought and climate stresses simultaneously strain household drinking water sources and rural agricultural production. Farmers deploy a variety of resilience strategies, including extending and intensifying irrigation. But uncoordinated increases in water use for crops can compete with the domestic needs of other consumers dependent upon the same water sources, spurring conflicts between households.

African decisionmakers universally identify institutional weaknesses and fragmentation  as critical impediments to achieving water security.

Yet less than 16 percent of all global development assistance for water supply and sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa for 2002 to 2021 was directed to water sector policy, governance, and institutional capacity building.

Less than half of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa have have realized significant implementation of integrated water resources management and few have achieved meaningful levels of engagement enabling consumers and communities to contribute to policymaking.

Resilience can be encouraged through establishing regular participatory platforms and processes for gathering water stakeholders across institutions and levels of governance.

Deliberate mechanisms such as water user associations, umbrella authorities, and water commissions can promote policy coherence. Structured procedures to share knowledge, align priorities, and coordinate information and resource flows can help maximize development effectiveness and impact.