Sanitation and Wastewater Atlas of Africa

7.1 Introduction

The country profiles in this chapter provide information about the water and sanitation sector in the 54 countries of Africa. Each country profile examines four main areas: water resources, wastewater management, water and sanitation provision, and legal and institutional frameworks. The data are displayed graphically to provide readers with easily understandable snapshots of thewater and sanitation situation. Each profile also includes a country map for locational context and a graphic to show water use of the three major consumptive use sectors (agriculture, municipal and industry). The profiles benchmark the process of tracking country status and progress towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Such progress is partly informed by the countries’ achievements of Millenium Development Goal 7.C on sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Water and sanitation ladders are also provided to help benchmark and monitor progress across the different indicators. The last section of the profiles highlights the countries’ legal, policy and institutional frameworks for water and sanitation. In some countries, significant change is ongoing, meaning that situations may have changed before the publication of this report.

Most countries in Africa failed to meet their target for sanitation under the Millennium Development Goals. There is hope that significant progress will be made under the Sustainable Development Goals

Researching the data in this chapter presented some challenges. In order to allow for consistent and comparable profiles, data were obtained from only a few select sources. The Africa Water Sector and Sanitation Monitoring and Reporting System established by the AfricanMinisters’Council onWater (AMCOW) was a key information source for these profiles. However, while some countries had time-

series data for many indicators, others had little or no data. Information on wastewater management was particularly hard to find and points to an information gap that urgently needs to be addressed for the continent. In addition, access to sanitation datasets related to SDGs’ definitions is hardly available, and this presents an urgent monitoring and evaluation challenge that needs to be addressed

Africa is the second driest continent in the world after Australia

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SANITATION AND WASTEWATER ATLAS OF AFRICA