World Bank report on Water Supply and Sanitation- A Review

Access to clean water supply is a major challenge in many underdeveloped countries, Nigeria inclusive. In this post, Dolapo Olaniyi highlights the 2017 Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene Poverty Diagnostic Initiative report and provides valuable insights on the report’s conclusions. 

Access to clean water supply is a basic right and a fundamental objective that ought to be properly implemented by any government of any country. Sadly, in most underdeveloped countries, there is a great challenge in accessing clean water supply, due to geometric population increase and grave poverty. In a recent press release by the World Bank on the 28th of August, 2017 at the Stockholm convention on “Water supply, sanitation, and Hygiene in the Era of the Sustainable Development Goals”, it was projected from the research carried out on 18 countries (Nigeria, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Mozambique, Niger, Pakistan, Tanzania, Panama, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Yemen, West Bank and Gaza) under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), that a total of $150 billion per year will be needed to achieve the water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) initiative. The convention identified poverty, lack of proper implementation of health policies and poor sanitation services as the main problems facing availability of good water in rural communities.

However, it was added that WASH was not enough because it only addressed a child’s well-being but a child’s future is dependent on adding health and nutrition interventions. According to the report, 75% of people living in rural areas lacked good sanitation with just 20% of them having access to improved water; 60% of rural dwellers in Nigeria trek 30 minutes to access water, water accessed by rural communities in Indonesia is derived from 5% waste water in urban cities, 80% water in Bangladesh is contaminated with E.coli, 24% of Ecuador water supply in rural areas are contaminated giving rise to stunted growth in 21% children, only 33% of Haiti population has access to water. World Bank’s County Director in Nigeria, Rachid Benmessaoud stated that diarrhea is the second killer of children less than 5 years old.

Ultimately, the convention identified three ways of addressing the WASH issues, which are: proper coordination of investments and interventions across sectors, effective allocation of future investments, better governance that will implement policies.

Please click here to view the full report.
Olaniyan Dolapo