Africa, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Health, Poverty & SDGs, Water & Sanitation

BURKINA FASO: Ensuring That the Origin of Life Isn’t Also the End of It

Brahima Ouédraogo

OUAGADOUGOU, Mar 25 2008 (IPS) - “Water is the origin of life…I come from Central Africa where we have a lot of water, but it was when I came here that I really understood the meaning of this expression,” says Antoinette Dinga Dzongo, the African Development Bank’s representative in Burkina Faso, in reference to the need for improved water provision in this West African country.

Now, Burkina Faso has taken a significant step to addressing this problem, launching a national water and sanitation programme at a cost more than a billion dollars.

Encompassing both rural and urban areas, the initiative will provide 17,290 wells and connections to potable water supplies. This should enable 90 percent of the approximately 14 million inhabitants of the nation to have access to potable water by 2015; at present, safe drinking water is within reach of just 60 percent of Burkinabés.

The year 2015 is the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Eight MDGs were agreed on by international leaders at the Millennium Summit held in 2000 at the United Nations, in New York. The goals are aimed at addressing various global problems, such as hunger, poverty and diseases that take a particular toll on developing states.

The seventh MDG, focused on environmental sustainability, seeks to halve the number of people without access to potable water and basic sanitation.

“It (the programme) is about bringing potable water as close to people as possible,” said Salif Diallo, the minister of agriculture, water affairs and fish resources at the time the project was unveiled (Mar. 21). The launch came ahead of World Water Day (Mar. 22) which was held this year under the theme ‘Sanitation’, in acknowledgement of 2008 being the International Year of Sanitation.

Government’s aim, added Diallo, is to set up a water point for every 300 people, placed at a maximum distance of a thousand metres from their residences.

In addition, authorities hope to increase from 10 to 57 percent the proportion of Burkinabés with access to sanitation, by 2015 – this through installing 671,000 toilets throughout the country. According to the National Office of Water and Sanitation, the lack of toilet facilities is especially dire outside of the capital, Ouagadougou, and Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city in the country: in outlying regions, only two percent of nationals have sanitation.

“It must be said that in the context of the sustainable human development of our country, the sanitation sector has always been ignored and under-estimated. Today, we are aware that we need to act, and this is why we have established this new programme of water and sanitation,” said Diallo.

“These public works for potable water will permit us to reduce the incidence of waterborne diseases among people, and to free up time for women so that they can devote themselves to income-generating activities,” he added, highlighting the extensive periods of time that women and girls are traditionally obliged to spend obtaining water for their families.

According to the Ministry of Health, waterborne diseases remain a leading health risk in Burkina Faso. The contamination of water with excreta that occurs in the absence of proper sanitation can open the door to various illnesses: the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) website notes that “Human excreta have been implicated in the transmission of many infectious diseases including cholera, typhoid, infectious hepatitis, polio, cryptosporidiosis, and ascariasis.”

“WHO estimates that 2.1 million people die annually from diarrhoeal diseases and that 10 percent of the population of the less-industrialised world suffer from parasitic worm infections related to improper waste and excreta management…Nearly two million of these deaths are in children of less-industrialised countries.”

Burkina Faso’s programme is being wholly funded by donors, 18 in all – primarily the Danish International Development Agency (with 106.6 million dollars), the French Development Agency (53.3 million dollars) and the African Development Bank (96.2 million dollars).

For the African Development Bank, says Dinga Dzongo, water management represents the “priority of priorities”.

Cheick Tidiane Tandja, executive director of the Regional Centre for Potable Water and Sanitation (Centre régional pour l’eau potable et l’assainissement, CREPA), believes the water and sanitation initiative of Burkina Faso – a poor country – should be followed by other states in the region.

CREPA supplies expertise on low-cost, appropriate technologies to countries in West Africa.

More than 66 million dollars of funds for the Burkinabé programme will be allocated to the training of municipal councils and village committees for the maintenance and monitoring of the water and sanitation facilities.

In the past, certain pumps have been allowed to fall into disrepair, according to Diallo.