Africa Water Atlas - UNEP/GRID-Sioux Falls

Improving the Quantity, Quality
and Use of Africa’s Water
Africa faces mounting challenges in providing enough safe water
for its growing population, especially for the huge numbers of
people migrating to peri-urban areas, where municipal water
services are often non-existent. Many African nations will fail to
achieve the Millennium Development Goal’s safe water target
to reduce by half the proportion of the population without
sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015, and many more
will miss the sanitation target that stipulates that by that date,
they reduce by half the proportion of the population without
sustainable access to basic sanitation. Other challenges include
avoiding potential conflicts over water in the 63 water basins
on the continent shared by two or more countries; adapting to
the impacts of climate change on water resources, which will be
greater than most other regions because Africa already suffers from
extreme rainfall variability; and developing water resources that are
adequate for local needs but that are unavailable due to political
and economic constraints.
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