Humanity has “broken the cycle of water”, its “vital substance”. The words spoken in New York by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the second day of the United Nations Water Conference resonate especially in Africa. It is the continent that suffers most, and increasingly, from problems of access to water.
Since 2010, there have been forty times more thirst riots in Africa. The situation is better in Ivory Coast and Mali than in Cameroon or the Democratic Republic of Congo. But on average, 40% of the African population does not have secure access to drinking water.
As the population grows, climate change multiplies and worsens droughts, as in East Africa right now. In parts of Kenya, the price of water has increased fivefold. Elsewhere in Central Africa and the Sahel, floods have stained clean water sources in recent months. In one case as in the other, the lack of drinking water, the cause of 80% of diseases, is causing a resurgence of cholera in fifteen African countries. 70% of Africans are deprived of a sanitation system, toilets, and wastewater treatment.