Changes in water supply in east Africa

In the last blog I mentioned that homes who were pipped and have a flush toilet had nearly 50 % reduction in diarrhoea cases so why are not more people using pipped water ?. 

There is a great article by Thompson J et al 2000 it explores how domestic water use over 30 years in East Africa has changed I will highlight some key findings from the paper that I am sure you will find very interesting.

What has changed ?

The change in water use is represented in figure 1

• It found that people on average was using less water than 30 years ago - fell from 98.7 litres per day in 1967 and by 1997 people used 54.9 litres 
• Countries who were  largely piped such as Tanzania and Uganda -  water supplies from the network has stoped. This means people have to get their water from, elsewhere and take the risk that it could be contaminated or pay high prices to water kiosks.
• Consumption gap has reduced between piped and unpinned homes - in 1967 there was a ratio of 8:1 now the ratio is 2.6:1 so the gap has reduced dramatically. 

• This is due to a lack of maintenance of the infrastructure by councils 

• While water use in piped homes water use has reduced since 1967 in piped homes in contrast homes which are not piped their water use has increased by 9 lites a day compared to 1967

What other sources are people getting water from now ?

Well its all down to the use of private vendors such as kiosks to buy water from this service did not exist in 1967 but by 1997 it made up 27 % of water sources for un-piped households. 

Due to a reduction of water, piped households receive they are also making use of these private kiosks and vendors in many low income countries such as Tanzania and Iganga 60 % of households use these facilities.

The problem is it isn't cheap - piped water cost 0.104 us cents per litre while a kiosk costs 0.181 and a vendor costs 0.447. It also takes up much more time - around 30 min each trip while for a well or tap it is 15 min.

How does this affect sanitation - will it improve ??

A large number of illness could be prevented from an improvement in water quality - as mentioned in the last blog water provided from pipes and from kiosks or private vendors where the safest. The problem is as shown from this research is that there has been a reduction of water available therefore less can be used for sanitation such as washing hands after going to the toilet or for cleaning. As represented in figure 3 un-piped homes use similar levels of water for drinking and cooking as piped homes but their is still a gap of water use even though it has increased for un piped homes since 1967 there is still a gap of 39.9  litres. Therefore un-piped homes reduce there use of water for sanitation purposes such as washing and bathing by around 50 - 60 % as represented in figure 2, unless this gap decreases there will cases of illness such as diarrhoea due to poor sanitation. 

Click this link to read an interesting blog I have read exploring water privatisation in South Africa. 

Figure 1 source Thompson J et al 2000

Figure 2 - Per capita water use by type, Source:| Thompson J et al 2000