Background

Water scarcity has proven to be a growing issue in Africa with more than 75% of Africa being classified as “arid” or “semi-arid”. On average, Africa is in a state defined as “water stress”, with the average person obtaining around only 1,500 cubic meters of water per year. The continent is slowly declining to a state of “water scarcity”, which is less than 1,000 cubic meters of water per person per year.

http://www.probeinternational.org/beijing-water/peak-water-limits-resource

There are many reasons as to why there is an insufficient amount of water in Africa. About ¾ of Africa being classified as arid or semi-arid, indicating that evaporation may exceed precipitation in the long term. In other words, the water currently in Africa is disappearing faster than it is replenishing itself. A key contributing factor to this slow precipitation rate has to do with a large geographical feature in Northern Africa, the Atlas Mountains. These mountains lie on the north coast, and end up isolating North Africa from the moist Mediterranean air that would otherwise offer a large amount of precipitation.  

Another rather obvious factor to the little amount of water is the large population of Africa. The population lies just over one billion people; which is a huge number for the water stressed continent. Africa’s population is growing, while at the same time water is diminishing, making the average amount of water per person decrease significantly. Also, with the large amount of people living in Africa, only about 10% of those people have access to abundant river water, which is the main source of water in Africa.

The water crisis in Africa is growing to be a very big reason for concern. More than 60% of the countries globally in which basic human water needs are not met are located in Africa (34 out of the 55 countries). This statistic really shows how significant this problem is in Africa when looking at water scarcity on a global scale, and therefore it is important that the water crisis in Africa be deeply looked at, and efforts be put forward to propose and act on a solution.