What is Water Scarcity?
Water scarcity is when people cannot access enough water to meet their needs for clean and safe water to drink, use for hygiene, and for sanitation. When a community does not have enough water, deadly diseases can spread throughout the population:
- Hand-washing is crucial for helping to prevent the spread of Covid and other infectious diseases. When there is not enough water for people to adequately wash their hands, diseases can spread more rapidly.
- When there is a lack of sanitation, contaminated drinking water can spread deadly infectious diseases, including cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, and polio. More than 800,000 children under the age of five, mostly from developing countries, die each year from diarrhea.
- When people have to travel a long way to obtain clean water, they may store it in their homes. Standing water attracts mosquitoes, which can carry malaria and other serious diseases.
Water scarcity occurs because there is not enough water in the environment to begin with, or it is not properly managed and distributed, or both. Some water scarcity is caused by climate and environmental changes. A prolonged lack of rain can cause severe droughts. Deserts can expand. Lakes and rivers can shrink or dry up completely.
Even if a country or region has enough water as a natural resource, the people who live there may still not have access to enough water for their basic needs because of mismanagement.
Examples of mismanagement include:
- Poor government management of water resources
- Depletion of water resources because of pollution or destruction of forests
- Not enough investment in protecting and developing water resources
- Lack of adequate water distribution systems
- Collapsing infrastructure
- Wars and other violent conflicts
- Water contamination
When safe water is not available nearby, the burden usually falls on women and children to walk long distances to collect it and carry it back. This time-consuming and exhausting task interferes with children’s ability to go to school and women’s ability to spend time with their families or work in jobs which would bring in much-needed income.
How Does Water Scarcity Affect Africa?
Several factors have come together to create a water scarcity crisis in Africa: climate change, a growing population, increasing urbanization, and more water being used for household and industrial purposes. According to the World Health Organization, water scarcity affects one out of three people in the African region.
Africa is experiencing severe droughts. Weather patterns are changing, and rivers and lakes that previously provided plentiful supplies of water are drying up. People are having to travel increasingly long distances to access the safe water that they need to survive.
The Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, is experiencing the worst drought the region has seen in 40 years after four years in a row of lower than normal rainfall. The drought has devastated agriculture in the region, causing extreme food shortages.
Without enough water, millions of livestock animals have died, and harvests have failed. This has caused the cost of food to skyrocket, making it too expensive for many to afford. About 7 million children in the region are malnourished, and 1.5 million people have been displaced.
The effects of water scarcity in Africa extend beyond the people who are most directly affected. Agriculture is a major part of the economy in all African countries. When water scarcity impacts agricultural production, that endangers the livelihood of many people, which, in turn, has a ripple effect on the economy as a whole.
Unfortunately, the problem of water scarcity in Africa is likely to get worse. By as soon as 2025, nearly 230 million people in Africa are expected to be experiencing water scarcity. As many as 460 million may be living in areas where water access is under stress.
Together, We Can Change Lives
With your support, we can continue to expand our reach and provide safe water solutions to more communities around the world.
How Can We Address Water Scarcity in Africa?
Addressing the problem of water scarcity in Africa will require a multi-pronged approach, including emergency assistance for people who have been displaced from their homes, and long-term solutions that will provide sustainable sources of water for at-risk communities.
The water purification systems that Healing Waters International provides communities in Africa and throughout the world address people’s immediate needs for clean and safe water as well as giving them a sustainable source of safe water for the future. These systems are custom designed for the needs of each community.
Healing Waters International has many water purification projects throughout Africa that bring safe and clean water to communities suffering from water scarcity. These include:
- A water purification system in Embakasi, Kenya, that has been providing safe water and jobs to the community since 2015.
- Eight sustainable water purification systems in or near urban areas in Rwanda that are owned and operated by local people. These have been providing clean water, jobs, and sustainable income for area residents since 2013.
- A water filtration system in Sierra Leone that provides water to the people in the community as well as to a health clinic that serves 7,000 people annually. This project has been improving the quality of health care since 2013.
- Six much-needed water purification systems in Somalia, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is currently suffering from the severe drought that has devastated the Horn of Africa countries. These systems have been helping to reduce the amount of water-borne illnesses since 2013.
- Clean water programs located throughout Uganda since 2013. Many use solar power, making it possible to place the systems in sites that do not have stable power supplies.
Healing Waters International is on a mission to end the suffering caused by water scarcity in Africa and throughout the world. We provide sustainable sources of clean and safe water that transform life in vulnerable communities.
Will you join us in our mission to help people not only survive but thrive physically, socially, and spiritually? We need you! Your contribution helps us to bring more of our life-giving water purification systems to people who are living in areas of water scarcity. Please donate today!