Africa: Civil society demands action on sanitation

Civil rights groups are calling on governments and donors to implement the existing commitments on water and sanitation saying that Africa is off-track on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Speaking during a meeting on the Africa Water Week in Midrand, South Africa the civil societies also called for allocation of half the percent of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for sanitation and also an increase in the political profile of sanitation.

According to IPS they again called for investment in infrastructure to mitigate floods, droughts and other threats and to involve citizens in the monitoring and management of rivers and lake basins in order to build climate resilience.

According to the civil rights groups, governments have repeatedly committed to increase support for water and sanitation most recently in July 2008, at the African Union (AU) Summit in Egypt however, they say implementation has failed due to a lack of funds and political will.

Jamillah Mwanjisi, executive secretary for the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation said during the meeting, “In certain countries, one in eight people have access to safe sanitation. In terms of water supply, it is mostly rich people in urban areas who have access, while the rural community still has to walk four to eight kilometers to get water.”

She said that donor aid is not sufficient for Africa and until recently sanitation was not on the political agenda.

Fatima Zohra Zerouati, chairperson of the National Federation for Environment Protection in Algeria added that Africa running late in terms of achieving goals on water and sanitation and there is need for swift action.

She emphasized that leaders should understand that water and sanitation are more important than the army, which receives far more resources in almost every country.

Ada-Oko Williams, the Regional Learning Centre Co-ordinator for Water Aid, an international NGO, says the way forward is prioritization of water and sanitation issues, the designation of responsible agencies and drawing up clear national plans for sanitation using MDG targets as benchmarks.

Rose Kaggwa, manager of external services for the National Water and Sewerage Corporation of Uganda, said that to move from talk to action, it is important to bring partners together to focus in one direction; otherwise, there would be too many people doing too many things in different direction.

Switzerland-based NGO International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance (IHRA) is also working on sustainable solutions to water and sanitation problems in West Africa.

One project, at a school in the village of Luwasa in the southern Nigerian state of Lagos, replaced four poorly-maintained pit latrines with new toilets and a rainwater harvesting system.

The schools nearly 2,000 pupils had stopped using the overflowing pit latrines, instead defecating in the bushes near the school compound. The school had a borehole, but it had dried up. The lack of water and private toilet facilities at the school had been linked to absenteeism among girls in particular.