Publication: Africa - Ebbing Water, Surging Deficits : Urban Water Supply in Sub-Saharan Africa
Date
2008-06
ISSN
Published
2008-06
Author(s)
Skilling, Heather
Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia
Chfadi, Tarik
Abstract
With only 56 percent of the population
enjoying access to safe water, Sub-Saharan Africa lags
behind other regions in terms of access to improved water
sources. Based on present trends, it appears that the region
is unlikely to meet the target of 75 percent access to
improved water by 2015, as specified in the Millennium
Development Goals (MDG). The welfare implications of safe
water cannot be overstated. The estimated health and
time-saving benefits of meeting the MDG goal are about 11
times as high as the associated costs. Monitoring the
progress of infrastructure sectors such as water supply has
been a significant by-product of the MDG, and serious
attention and funding have been devoted in recent years to
developing systems for monitoring and evaluating in
developing countries. Piped water reaches more urban
Africans than any other form of water supply-but not as
large a share as it did in the early 1990s. The most recent
available data for 32 countries suggests that some 39
percent of the urban population of Sub-Saharan Africa is
connected to a piped network, compared with 50 percent in
the early 1990s. Analysis suggests that the majority of
those who lack access to utility water live too far away
from the distribution network, although some fail to connect
even when they live close by. Water-sector institutions
follow no consistent pattern in Sub-Saharan Africa. Where
service is centralized, a significant minority has chosen to
combine power and water services into a single national
multi-utility urban water sector reforms were carried out in
the 1990s, with the aim of creating commercially oriented
utilities and bringing the sector under formal regulation.
One goal of the reforms was to attract private participation
in the sector.
Citation
“Banerjee, Sudeshna; Skilling, Heather; Foster, Vivien; Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia; Morella, Elvira; Chfadi, Tarik. 2008. Africa - Ebbing Water, Surging Deficits : Urban Water Supply in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa infrastructure country diagnostic
background paper ; no. 12. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7835 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”