Waving Goodbye: Personal Reflections on Water and Sanitation in Africa.

-

 



Waving Goodbye: Personal Reflections on Water and Sanitation in Africa.

When beginning this blog series, the theme of Water and Sanitation in Africa stood out to me particularly given it’s importance- it is a basic human right that unfortunately 1/3 of the global population does not enjoy. The 6th Sustainable Development Goal clearly identifies the necessity of Clean Water and Sanitation for all, yet despite this, the sanitation deficit across the globe are alarming and require serious attention- even more so at a time when we are experiencing a global pandemic.

Over the course of this blog, I have tried to explore a range of Water and Sanitation problems in Africa, and opportunities for how to tackle them. But the common denominator for all the possible solutions I discuss is community engagement. Whether it be through capacity building and empowering them with the right tools and support, or introducing low-cost, innovative facilities- all we need to start progressing in the right direction is a bottom-up orientated approach. This includes working closely with communities to help understand their needs, as well as helping them understand the importance of water and sanitation for their well-being. I strongly believe that the merits of participatory development are wide-ranging and long-term, and especially advantageous for marginalised groups such as women (Guijt,1998).

When thinking about ‘Water and Sanitation’, I associated it with hands, and so I deliberately wanted to incorporate this theme of “safe hands” throughout the blog. It was a symbolic approach to emphasise not only the importance of hygiene, but also question in whose hands do the solutions lie in. The positioning and gestures of a hand can give powerful insights, which is why each post was introduced with a hand picture to encourage the reader to reflect on the post they were about to engage with: the actors involved, the attitudes to the subject or however they chose to perceive it.

Now, having come to the end of this blogging journey, I have grown more optimistic towards Water and Sanitation in Africa. Despite the vast complexities to the issues I have touched upon over this series, which are of course overwhelming and shocking, I’ve also learnt about that we know how to solve these problems! It’s really just a matter of taking action and directing resources effectively. We are fast approaching 2030, yet there is still a lot to do before we successfully achieve SDG 6. But I am hopeful, because the solutions to Water and Sanitation in Africa really are in OUR hands.

 

 

 


Comments

  1. Sophia Saeed5 January 2021 at 15:13

    Great blog Hamnah, the safe hands photograph really resonated well with me too. I am optimistic, but it may take a long time to see sanitation for all in Africa.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lana Khan7 January 2021 at 01:45

    This is so well wrapped up, with a personal touch and a final emphasis on the theme you had set out to achieve- which I think you did amazingly well. I really enjoyed reading the unique perspectives and angles you decided to bring into this blog series! Well done Hamnah!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sanitation Taboos: Menstrual Hygiene

-
Image
  Sanitation Taboos: Menstrual Hygiene  Sanitation is far from homogenous, as Mcfarlane et al. (2014) explores in their paper about how sanitation is produced and sustained in informal settlements. A gendered lens is therefore needed to unveil some of the disparities in “everyday sanitation” that women experience. Women disproportionately bear the difficulties of sanitation inadequacies ( Bapat and Agarwal 2003 ) but are reluctant to discuss their experiences- partly because they deem water access and quality as more important than sanitation (ibid). Although they are intrinsically linked, Curtis et al. (2000) note that improved health outcomes are dependant more on adequate sanitation facilities (such as waste disposal) than water provision; reiterating the importance of sanitation that is often undervalued. But the key factor that underpins why sanitation is overlooked is that is a ‘taboo’ topic across several cultures around the world, including within Africa. It is unc...
Read more

Safe Water

-
Image
  Safe Water  In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognised water and sanitation to be a human right. One aspect that defines this right is that water must be ‘safe’- free from microorganisms and other substances that can threaten one’s health. Chlorine has been used for over a century to disinfect water. It has contributed substantially to the increase in access to safe drinking water for millions of people around the world as it can be incorporated on varying scales- ranging from piped networks in urban areas, to household treatments in rural settings. Chlorination is regarded as the most affordable, reliable and effective method of water purification, especially because of its ability to kill the majority of pathogens responsible for diarrheal diseases in children (GEMS, 2018); thus being an approach endorsed by the WHO to improve water quality (2003). There is a plethora of epidemiology and economics literature that has concluded the wide-reaching...
Read more

Tippy Tap Water Hack - adapting to 'scarcity' during COVID-19

-
Image
Tippy Tap Water Hack - adapting to 'scarcity' during COVID-19  Underpinning the WASH challenges in Africa is the concept of water scarcity that many countries face, which refers to over 1000 people competing for a single flow unit of 1,000,000m^3 per year (equivalent to less than 1000m^3/person/year). But this approach to understanding water scarcity is disputed as being dominated by a reductionist, physical evaluation; failing to acknowledge the limitations to the distribution and access to water which is contingent on an array of complex factors including political, economic, and social determinants. Regardless of what metric is used to define the relationship between water and people, the bottom line is that there is indeed inequitable access to clean water across Africa, which thereby compromises their sanitation and hygiene- and is a great threat to public health. The merits of handwashing for public health, for example, has been studied widely over the past decades- pa...
Read more