2.1 billion people around the world don’t have access to safe water.

Safe water reduces water-borne diseases like diarrhea and cholera and saves hours every day spent fetching water – especially for women and girls. Safe and reliable water keeps families healthy and lets children stay in school.

Establishing safe and reliable water services is about more than digging wells and installing pumps. It means mapping out water systems to reach every community and household and collecting data to make sure water keeps flowing. It means training mechanics and establishing a culture where people pay for water service, so water points can be repaired when they break. This systems-change approach makes water services sustainable and reliable.

Africa

In the Horn of Africa and the Namibian Desert, almost no water falls. Meanwhile, the western part of the continent near the equator receives as much as 4,000 millimeters annually.

Three of four Africans use the ground water as their main water supply. The groundwater is not always available though as it accounts for only 15% of the continent’s water supply. There are also serious concerns about the quality of the groundwater. Perhaps the greatest cause of Africa’s problem of a lack of water is that the continent cannot effectively utilize its resources. Though approximately 4 trillion cubic meters of water is available every year, only about 4% of that is used. The continent and its people lack the technical knowledge and financial resources needed to access their water supplies.

Lack of access to water is a larger problem in Africa than anywhere else. Of the 25 nations in the world with the greatest percentage of people lacking access to safe drinking water, 19 are in Africa.