Water Stress in SubSaharan Africa

In commemoration of the World's water day on  March 22 we will be focussing on the Water Stress in Subsaharan Africa.

The water related Millennium development goal's target was to reduce by half the population of the World's people with no access to safe drinking water.
This was the first MDG to be achieved; as at five years before the 2015 set date 89% of the World's people (6.1 billion people) were said to have access to improved water sources. This was 1% above the initial target of 88%.
However, the same cannot be said for the Sanitation component of the MDG which is lagging behind seriously in some regions.

In Subsaharan Africa the story is not the same as in the other parts of the world. More than 40% of the people that still lack access to improved water sources live in this region. Just about 61% of the people in this region have access to improved water sources.

 Source: water desalination plants 

The improvement is also not widespread across the region, as the people in the urban areas are doing far much more better than the people in the rural areas.
Also most of the stress to obtain water is borne by the women and girls. It's been said that globally it costs women a total of 152 million hours daily to obtain water.
If access to water is improved, these hours can be spent doing other things which will help improve the productivity of women.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2012/drinking_water_20120306/en/

Currently over 300 million of the 800 million people in Africa live in water stressed regions.

It's being projected that by 2030, 75 to 250 million people in Africa will be living in regions of high water stress, which may displace between 24 and 700 million people as living conditions become more unbearable.

http://www.gisclimat.fr/manifestation-scientifique/conf%C3%A9rence-%E2%80%9Cwater-scarcity-africa-issues-and-challenges%E2%80%9D

Paul Reig, associate for WRI's Aqueduct project, to The Huffington Post has said that "Water stress can have serious consequences for countries around the world. Droughts, floods and competition for limited supplies can threaten national economies and energy production, and even jeopardize people’s lives. If countries and international-level decision makers understand more clearly where water stress is most severe, they can direct attention and money toward the most at-risk regions."

Hence more efforts need to be concentrated on areas of water Stress in Africa, this will lead to improvements in the quality of life of the people, health, sanitation, economy, Agriculture and also help sustain the already attained development.