ABSTRACT
Africa has extensive water resources that experience much lower levels of exploitation than the rest of the world, but the people of Africa continue to suffer from water scarcity. The UN announced that as we approached the end of the UN Decade for Water 2005–2015, there remained many challenges worldwide, with 700 million people in 43 countries suffering from water scarcity, forecast to worsen such that by 2030, half the world’s population will be living under high water stress, including up to 250 million in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any region (UN DESA, 2014). Yet the FAO (2014) estimates that only 5.5 per cent of renewable freshwater resources are actually withdrawn in Africa set against a global average of 8.8 per cent and 21.5 per cent for Asia. The levels of exploitation are uneven, and withdrawals are increasing through the demands made by a growing urban population and intensification of irrigation. UNEP (2008) estimates world increases in water withdrawals of 1.38 times between 1995 and 2025, but for Africa this is expected to be in excess of 1.5.
