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reported by Nigel Marsh, World Vision East Africa Communications Manager
NAIROBI - A current wave of droughts and water shortages in East Africa is just a taste of what is to come, recent research suggests. Warnings that the sub region faces a serious water crisis in the next 25 years have been coming from a variety of sources, and increasingly feature in strategic planning at donor and government level.
Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Somalia are all likely to slip into the category of "water scarce" nations - that is, countries with less than 1,000 cubic metres of fresh water available for each person every year. In these countries serious water shortages could harm the health and livelihood of entire populations, and may undermine other development efforts.
Eritrea, Tanzania and Uganda will join the ranks of the next most serious category, "water-stressed" countries whose people have an annual allocation of between 1,000 and 1,700 cubic metres of water each.
At present, only Burundi is recognised as technically water-scarce by this definition, and only Kenya, Rwanda and Somalia as water-stressed.
By 2025, nearly 200 million people in sub-Saharan African will face water scarcity, and 460 million will be water-stressed – perhaps as many as are stressed in the entire world today.
Failure to address the water issue will undermine every other area of development. Already 80 per cent of disease in developing nations is attributed to inadequate or contaminated water supplies, and every eight seconds a child dies from a water-related disease.
Answering the need in years to come is going to take big thinking – and probably big spending. Already prospective droughts and related food shortages in various parts of the region have prompted World Vision International complex emergency experts to raise the possibility of an integrated regional response for East Africa.
“We are recognising this as a serious issue,” says Africa complex emergencies manager Ton van Zutphen. “We are prepared to form an assessment team once the sub-regional director and the national directors have had a chance to discuss the issues.”
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