Why are the West African states passive in this crisis ?

(justgiving.com)

--> From a citizen's point of view

According to a research led by Afrobarometer (detailed here country by country), when asked about what should be the top priority of their government, citizens from all over Africa ranked water supply fifth, after unemployment, health, education and infrastructure. In countries that are in my interest here, such as in Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger, they ranked it first.

Still according to the same research, 55% of citizens said their government’s effort in providing water and sanitation services was "fairly bad" to "very bad". Even more, the citizens think the performance has worsened. For instance, in Ghana, it negatively increased by 28 points.

Why isn't the State acting ?

The Guardian reported some reasons about why it seems like Western Africa countries aren't resolving their water problems. Money is often the first problem : UNICEF reported that no African country has devoted more than 0,5 percent of GDP to WASH (UNICEF program for clean waters). They also evaluated the cost for bringing clean water and sanitation in all Western and Central Africa countries to 30$ billion a year, which must seems quite overwhelming.

But it appears that, country by country, additional problems occur. For instance, Nigeria and Sierra Leone don't really have a formal water policy ; Ghana and Liberia are struggling accessing donor funds, such as local sources (because they can't resolve the crisis with their own funds) ; Burkina Faso has a problem of slowness in the administration responsible for finanicial mobilizing.

But the other problem is paradoxically, how quick the international exigences are growing : the paper also reported that Haba Arbu Diallo, former Burkina Faso water minister said "Many African countries [at this rate] will need two or three millennia to meet their MDGs. If urbanization continues at this pace in 10 years' time, every Africa country will be faced with a massive challenge. The time has come to stop making commitments and to implement what we have already agreed to". Basically, Nations need to act now about things they were supposed to have achieved years ago, instead of agreeing in doing new things, although probably better things, at every meeting. Because it turns out that in doing so, they're throwing themselves in a never-ending and unproductive commitment loop.

(ECOWAS members flags)(themonroviatimes.com)

Background : where does this apparent incapacity come from ?

According to ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States), which is a regional cooperation in Western Africa including all countries (exception made of Niger and Guinea that were excluded after their respective coup ten years ago), Western Africa countries do have strength in handling the clean water crisis, but also recognized issues :

Strengths

Issues

1. Strong will of the politic actors to bring water issues to the highest State level. 2. Presence of a lot of international and local organizations. 3. Experience of old water basins. 4. Experience about State reforms for water management in some States. 5. Decentralization of water decisions. 6. Existence of academic degrees and researches in water scarcity.

1. Not enough infrastructures in all WA countries, and bad condition of the existing ones. 2. Not enough coordination of the resources highlighting policies at national, regional and local scales. 3. Physical conditions unsuitable to water collection (climate, landscape) 4. Pollution of the water resources. 5. Poverty, not enough financial resources from the population and the State (dependance of international aid). 6. Insufficiency of trained human capacities. 7. Insufficiency of water resources data. 8. Issues in applying laws and rules. 9. Institutions instability.

(Adapted from ECOWAS data)

These information have to be taken with caution, as I stated in the previous article, because information from governments aren't always reliable as they like to show a better situation than the actual one. However, I highlighted in the table the strengths/issues that are deeply political. As for the issues, I think they can almost all gather under a same problem : the lack of financial resources.

State opportunities : are all of following suggestions good ideas ?

The Africa Water Atlas gives out some ideas on how to overcome this financial lack. But are they all good long term ideas ?

Their first suggestion is to "improve financing", by spending 1% of GDP on water and sanitation, asking for international aid, implement tariffs and taxes (Hashimoto Action Plan 2010). On the paper, these ideas seem good : of course, doing so would improve the financial situation and create opportunities. But as I explained, most of the countries can't spend more money on water supplies (because they got other crisis to deal with, such as food crisis, unemployment, and so on), and with a tariff and tax system, the problem wouldn't be solved because if the people can't afford bottled or clean water, they certainly can't afford a tax rise. This could result in revolts, as it happened in Cameroon in 2005.

The second suggestion would be to encourage concessions in privatization schemes. The idea would be to, as it is often done in many African countries such as Morocco, where it works well, to let a domestic or foreign company finance and run (and earn benefit from) water systems. The advantage is that the responsibility isn't on the State anymore, and that there's a certain guarantee that the system is going to work. The problem is more about letting foreigners run local systems : they often don't know the local needs, ask for too much money from customers, and the ownership is a benefice for the company and not the State, that ends up being financially scammed because foreign lawyers know how to write an advantageous deal for their company.

There is a lot of other suggestions, (just take a look at the Atlas for more information), but my point was to show that looking at answers, and especially financial answers, at the State scale wasn't the best thing to do.