#2Contextualising Water Scarcity and Gender Inequality in East Africa

Hello again! In today’s blog I will be exploring the relationship between water scarcity, groundwater, and gender to highlight inequalities surrounding groundwater access and use. I will draw on the case studies of Uganda and Kenya to show that whilst women bear a disproportionate burden of functional groundwater management at the household and community level, they are repeatedly excluded from formal water governance.

 

Water scarcity in Africa

It is important that we first understand water scarcity in its different classifications. Physical water scarcity is defined as a shortage in the availability of renewable freshwater relative to its demand. Physical water scarcity is typically seen in the arid and semi-arid regions of Africa. Economic water scarcity concerns a region’s lack of capacity to use its water resources despite their availability. Such limited capacity is often linked to inadequate water infrastructures and poor water management.

 

These definitions alone, however, cannot define the scale in which countries in Africa are being affected by the water crisis. Queue water scarcity metrics. Water scarcity metrics are indicators which quantify water availability and water accessibility. The Water Stress Index (WSI) and the Water to Availability Index (WTA) remain two of the most widely adopted indices today. Despite this, these indices have been heavily critiqued for estimating renewable freshwater resources based on observations of mean annual river-runoff (MARR). This is due to the tendencies of MARR to mask the temporal variability in freshwater resources including seasonal and inter-annual rainfall. Considering this, hydrologists have called for more holistic metrics of water, although these too have been criticised for their subjective weighting of variables.

 

Groundwater storage and (in)accessibility

 

As droughts sweep across the arid tropics of Africa, surface water is becoming less reliable. Thanks to climate change, erratic rainfall in countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia have become the norm, making it increasingly difficult for populations to access a year-round supply of water for agricultural irrigation and domestic activities. These shortfalls have forced drought-prone regions to turn to alternative and more resilient sources of water, namely groundwater.

Source: Droughts in northern Kenya force women to walk 

long distances to search for water

Despite its resilience, groundwater falls short on providing equal access to all. Women and girls are neither equal water users nor providers of this water source. This is in part due to existing cultural norms which assign men and women different priorities and responsibilities for water use. Although women in Kenya and Uganda are heavily responsible for water fetching for domestic use such as cooking, washing, and cleaning, they are absent in water utility and related decision making. They are neither the primary water decision-makers at the household level nor national policy level.

 

In Uganda specifically, female representation within the Ministry of Water and Environment is only 19% of the water board. Under-representation leaves the practical and strategic needs of women unattended thus having adverse impacts on water and sanitation development. Therefore, it is important to have female representatives as they can help design inclusive policies and raise concerns which may have otherwise been neglected. Maria Mutagamba is a prime example of this. While she served as Ugandan minister of state for water, Maria introduced the 5-year gender strategies, encouraging women to take on central roles within decision-making committees and providing insight into the different ways in which women’s concerns could be incorporated into industries of water and sanitation. Two years after the strategies were imposed, Ugandan’s access to safe water grew by 10%.

 

Source: Woman in Uganda pumping water from a well

Like Uganda, Kenya faces issues around inclusivity within water management. Women are only able to access water connections if they hold ownership of land; also known as title deeds. In a highly patriarchal society, acquiring these are virtually impossible. Women are seen as ‘unwilling to invest time and energy into boosting farm production’ and so less than 2% of title deeds are issued to women. The International Development’s Kenya Integrated Water, Sanitation and Health (KIWSSH) project has thus been introduced in the hopes of tackling these inequities. The project has pushed for new and improved recruitment strategies and policies for women, and increased awareness for greater gender quality thus increasing access to water services for thousands of Kenyan women.

Initiatives for a better future

These two case studies together have shown that whilst it may not yet be common knowledge, ‘women are the secret weapon to better water management’. If we are to actualise the full potential of groundwater, the male-dominating cultures which embed many African countries’ water sectors must be reoriented.