Zooming in on East Africa

In my previous post I leaped without further ado into the process of reviewing literature on the topic of urban water and sanitation. I am eager to continue doing that, but after a bit of consideration, I realise the need to focus my exploration of the topic a bit. My first attempt to do this is deciding that the geographical focus of the blog is going to be on East Africa, mainly the countries Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. By narrowing down the scope I am hoping that my posts will be richer in detail and enable a greater consideration of place-specific contexts. In this post I will attempt to introduce my chosen area by considering a few physical and socio-economic characteristics that distinguish this region. Finally I'll take a look at some statistics of rural and water access in East Africa. This will inevitably be an incomplete introduction, but lets see how we get on, and remember, that the goal is to set the scene for further analysis.

Physical Map of East Africa (image from Encyclopædia Britannica) 

East Africa is characterised by varied physiography, with low coastal plains along the Indian Ocean in Kenya and Tanzania, central inland plateaus, mountain ranges (including both Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro) and large inland water bodies such as Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika. Many areas are characterised by little annual variation in temperatures due to the near equator location, however, the varied physiography across East Africa gives rise to a range of temperatures and a number of local climates, both subtropical and temperate. Rainfall usually occurs in two rainy seasons (from March to May and from October to December) as the inter-tropical convergence zone passes the area (MetOffice, 2015; ILRI, 2010). 

Using the CIA World Factbook I have gathered a few recent metrics on the three countries (see table below). No country can or should be reduced to these simple statistics, but I think they are helpful here to just indicate that the three countries seem to match the trends outlined by Fox (2011), one of the articles I referred to in my previous post. In comparison to the world, these three East African countries have a low per capita GDP (PPP) and are all experiencing population growth, and particularly high levels of urban growth.

Table 1: Country metrics (data from The World Factbook)

	Kenya	Uganda	Tanzania
GDP per capita (PPP) in US dollars	3100	2000	2700
GDP per capita - country rank	187	209	204
Population (in millions)	45.9	37.1	51.0
Population growth rate (percentage)	1.93	3.24	2.79
Urban population (percentage)	25.6	16.1	31.6
Urbanisation (percentage annual rate of change)	4.34	5.43	5.36

Having looked a bit at the bigger picture, I want to refocus attention on the issue of water and sanitation. Through the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program I found the latest 2015 statistics of use of drinking water sources and sanitation for each of the three East African countries. For now let’s just look at the data for the use of drinking water sources, which I have displayed in pie charts below.  

The data used is available in the 2015 WHO/UNICEF report; "Progress on Sanitation and Drinkning Water" pp. 56-77

From the charts it is clear that a greater proportion of urban populations across all countries have piped water on their premises, while a greater percentage of rural populations rely on surface or unimproved sources for drinking water. Piped water on premises means that there is a “water connection located inside the user’s dwelling, plot or yard”, unimproved sources refers to “unprotected dug well, unprotected spring, cart with small tank/drum, tanker, truck, bottled water”, while surface water sources include “river, dam, lake, pond, stream, canal, irrigation canals” (definitions are found on page 52 in the report). From looking at the charts, it seems that urban populations use better and safer drinking water sources. I do not want to agree or disagree with that, but instead challenge those numbers a little bit. The statistics report on where populations get their water, but say nothing about the process of getting it. We do not know if the household pipes or public taps are operational all day or if the sources are unreliable. Thinking back to the study by Thompson et al.(2000), the authors found that collection times in East Africa from 1967 to 1997 had increased (the average return time changed from 9.3 minutes to 21.4 minutes). The major reason for this increase was arguably queuing at the source due to functional failures and increasing demand due to population growth. The point I am trying to make is simple; numbers only tell us one part of the story. We have no idea how easy or cumbersome the process of getting that water actually is and how much or how little that process interferes with people’s daily life. 

One final point I want to make is related to sanitation. I want to question how improved the ‘improved sources’ actually are from a sanitation perspective, particularly diarrhoeal disease. The category ‘other improved drinking sources’ is defined as “public taps or standpipes, tube wells or boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater collection” (52). The name ‘improved’ implies that something is getting better and my first thought was that these sources were indeed better because they provide protected water access and higher water quality. That is indeed an improvement (!), but I think SandyCairncross’ (2003) article about water and sanitation misconceptions makes a very interesting point. She asserts that water quality improvements only have a small effect on reducing the incidences of diarrhoeal disease. Instead, by looking at historical improvements in public health, she argues that it is improved domestic hygiene achieved by household water supply and excreta disposal, which significantly reduces the incidents of (and deaths caused by) diarrhoeal disease. In all three countries, the improved water source category is the largest – the question is if these improved sources make significant changes to public health?