Africa: Exploring the Water and Sanitation Crisis

Hi and welcome to my final blog post! Over the past few weeks I have explored different issues relating to the water and sanitation crisis in Africa. For this final post, I will briefly explore the road to a sustainable future for Africa's water and sanitation.    Briefly mentioned in previous blogposts is Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) - to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030 ( UN 2018 ). The proposal of SDG 6  is an improvement of the Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG 7) which targeted to decrease the population that did not have sustainable access to water and basic sanitation by 50% before 2015 but was not achieved. SDG 6 has additionally dimensions to address the faults of MDG 7, including affordability, accessibility, and water quality ( Weststrate et al. 2018 ).  Figure 1: Outline of SDG 6 Targets  Now that we are swiftly approaching 2030, it is important to track any progress and reflect on what further changes

Welcome back! This week's blog post will be exploring the issues surrounding faecal contamination and management of groundwater sources and hygiene facilities in Africa. Before going any further, we must first try to understand what is meant by an 'improved water' source. The  WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (2017)  defines drinking water by the nature of their design and construction and having the potential to deliver safe water with 3 conditions:  Accessible on premises   Available when needed Free from faecal and chemical contamination Although having adequate local water supply and sanitation facilities in low-income countries is critically important to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6, there still remains multiple cases where on-going monitoring and preservation of communal water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities are inadequate. More importantly, there is significant evidence which shows that ' improved  water sour