The Implications of Rapid Urbanisation in Sub-Saharan Africa

The main purpose of this post is to identify and explain the rationale behind the patterns of access to safe water and sanitation facilities in various urban regions throughout Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), mainly taking into account the implications of rapid urbanisation.

Rapid urbanisation in SSA has been viewed by some observers as a phenomenon which provides urban spaces with the stimulant they need to grow. Indeed, it is undeniable that urbanisation provides the conditions conducive to economic and infrastructural expansion, as economic activity takes a step away from the agricultural-type described in Rostow’s "Traditional Society" to become more advanced and lucrative.

In reality, ‘virtually no country has graduated to a high-income status without urbanizing, and urbanization rates above 70 percent are typically found in high-income countries’ (World Bank’s 2013 Global Monitoring Report). Thus, longstanding principles of economic and development progression have regarded urbanisation as a fundamental aspect of economic growth in the developing world.

However, for all the economic and development advances that reside from rapid urbanisation in SSA, the region’s urban population has been subject to sizeable drawbacks. For all its advantages, rapid urbanisation in SSA inflicts a significant challenge for the development of improved safe water supply sources and sanitation facilities. This is to the extent that countless urban regions across SSA are failing to meet basic infrastructural needs in regard to safe water and waste disposal, for example (UNISDR).

As I alluded to in the first post of this series, the rapid growth of urban areas has amplified the demand for access to safe water and sanitation facilities to the extent that population growth in urban SSA is increasing the tension between the population’s growing needs and what the planet can actually provide. This resonates with the opinion of Joan Clos, the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, who said:

Africa is the fastest urbanizing continent on the planet and the demand for water and sanitation is outstripping supply in cities.

There are many reasons for this negative relationship, most of which revolve around the increasing tension put on facilities by a growing population. Despite the fact that since the mid-1990s urban access to a safe water supply has expanded, albeit slowly, efforts to increase the SSA population’s access to an improved water supply have not been sufficient to cope with such high levels of population growth (World Bank, 2011). As alluded to by Baye et al. (2012), water supply systems and sanitation facilities have failed to meet the needs of consumers as they are continuously confronted with problems of under- and over-use, negligent maintenance and insufficient ‘cost recovery.’

The process of rapid urbanisation is seen by some observers as a largely unwelcome source of more problems in regard to access to safe water and sanitation facilities. The development of improved water supply facilities in nations with high growth rates among urban populations is often seen to be trailing behind urban population growth. For this reason, an increasing number of the urban population in SSA are turning to unimproved sources of drinking water, including wells, boreholes and vendors. In fact, dependence on wells and boreholes in urban regions with high population growth rates grew from 25 to 27 percent between the late 90s and the late 2000s (World Bank, 2011).

This may come as a revelation since the number of individuals with access to piped water has increased dramatically over the past 10 years (see Graph 1).

Graph showing urban population served with piped water. Source: WHO/UNICEF (2015)

However, there is a simple explanation for why so many urban dwellers are having to turn to unimproved sources of drinking water. The issue is one of distribution, not volume; the development of piped water services in urban spaces in SSA has been uneven. The current tariff arrangements benefit the wealthiest in society. For example, in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, 80 percent of the affluent communities have access to the piped public supply, whereas only 16 percent do in less well-to-do areas (World Bank, 2011).

Urban population growth has too overtaken the rate of improved sanitation in SSA, leaving a greater number of the population dependent on unimproved forms of sanitation. Countries with high population growth rates among their urban regions tend to have a comparatively lower proportion of their population with access to improved sanitation. This is evidenced by Carolina Dominguez Torres, as she writes for the World Bank:

In the late 2000’s, on average 52 percent of the urban population in these countries had access to improved sanitation, compared to 67 and 71 percent in countries with medium and low urban population growth rates, respectively.

The need for improved sanitation facilities in Ethiopia, for example, is stark, as a mere 21 percent of the population has access to satisfactory sanitation facilities. In Ethiopia, the majority of the population, mostly the deprived urban dwellers, are subsisting in contaminated environments, unprotected from sanitation and water-related diseases. In fact, more than 88 percent of the population in urban slums are forced to use unimproved sanitation services (Beyene et al., 2015).

This post has aimed to explore the state of access to safe water and sanitation facilities in SSA, using various examples of spaces which are experiencing rapid urbanisation. By identifying the various patterns of access in SSA, it is possible to begin to comprehend how far management strategies still have to go to meet various goals. The next blog in this series of posts will take a look into a specific example of a current system of water provision in an urban setting within Africa, and go on to analyse its effectiveness.