The number of people in Africa lacking access to safe sanitation is rising, despite repeated promises by the continent’s national leaders to tackle the problem.
Poor sanitation is causing hundreds of thousands of deaths a year in Africa, where 600 million people – about 70 per cent of the population – do not have a safe toilet, according to NGO WaterAid. That number is up 210 million from 1990, largely because the continent’s population has increased and more people have moved to urban slums, where there has been no corresponding increase in sanitation.
Development goal
At the current rate, the millennium development goal of halving the number of people living with dangerously poor sanitation by 2015 will not be met in Africa until the middle of the next century.Funding for sanitation services is falling well short of the commitments made by governments, according to Water Aid.
Under the eThekwini declaration of 2008, African governments pledged to spend at least 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product on sanitation and hygiene, but only one state – Equatorial Guinea – has met that target. Many national leaders have also set their own targets, but few of these are on track.
According to estimates from the UN Development Programme, the shortfall in water and sanitation services costs sub-Saharan African countries about 5 per cent of GDP a year.
In 2010, this equated to about $55 billion (€42 billion), more than one-tenth more than the $48 billion provided in development aid to the whole continent in the same year. – (Guardian service)