Water - Africa

To make progress in the water sector as in other sectors, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) needs both institutional development and investment finance. One of the region’s main water-related challenge is to extend access to safe drinking water and sanitation (WSS). Only about 58 percent of the population has access to piped water supply and 37 percent has access to improved sanitation.

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in water supply and sanitation, the number of people served must more than double, from 350 million in 2000 to 720 million in 2015. Even then, some 200 million would remain unserved. The expected annual cost of meeting the MDG target for water is between US$1.7 and 2.1 billion, and just as much is likely to be needed for sanitation. Most countries are undertaking WSS sector reforms, and some have achieved good progress in expanding access to services and improving operating performance.

Average per capita water availability in the region is about 5,300 cubic meters—moderate by world standards, but much of the region is arid with highly variable rainfall. The high level of rainfall variability is an important factor mitigating against growth and poverty reduction in Africa. Artificial storage is a necessity. For lack of well managed water-storage infrastructure, water-related services—irrigation, water supply, and hydropower—are much less prevalent than in other regions. For example, only 3.6 percent of the region’s total cropland is irrigated. SSA has an extraordinary density of international river basins; successful regional cooperation to develop and manage infrastructure and water flows in these basins promises large benefits.

Key Water Challenges

Water supply and sanitation: Governments face a twin challenge: to close the gap in rural areas—where only two in five people have access to water supply and fewer than one in five have access to sanitation—and to keep up with rapid population growth in urban areas. Utility performance in WSS at present is mostly very poor. The need is to simultaneously increase investments and to build implementation capacity by scaling up the reform agenda and strengthening institutions.

Water resources management: The starting point for many projects is institution building, including for regional river basin organizations to manage the sustainable development of water resources.

Hydropower: Key challenges are low implementation capacity and financial constraints and an unattractive environment for private investment.

World Bank Response

Water supply and sanitation: This represents the biggest category of lending. Projects seek to facilitate dialogue on sector reform and to help build national reform and investment programs that other donors can support. Each year World Bank-assisted projects provide new access to water supply for some 3.5 million people, and help to build or rehabilitate 4,500 rural water points.

Irrigation: With other international agencies, the World Bank has prepared an irrigation strategy, Investment in agricultural water for poverty reduction and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa that identifies four priorities: (1) setting a strategic framework and action plans; (2) promoting institutional and policy reforms; (3) investing in viable and sustainable projects; and (4) ensuring effective and successful implementation through cost-effective management arrangements.

Water resources management: Projects are supporting the development of infrastructure in shared river basins (such as the Senegal and Niger basins). The World Bank also supports the Nile Basin Initiative as a framework through which its member states can cooperatively develop the resources of the Nile Basin to fight poverty and promote socio-economic development in the region.

Hydropower: The Bank supports investments ranging from small run-of-river to rehabilitation to multi-purpose projects.