The Hydropolitics of Africa

  "Water is a basic human right." Figure 1. Source: TVC News Nigeria, October 2022. Modern development discourse has shifted to see privatisation as the solution to water provision . In this short blog post, I would like to look at some narratives of privatisation in Nigeria, looking first at a news report by TVC News Nigeria. The video above demonstrates one side of the privatisation debate. Activists in Lagos, as well as members of the NGO 'Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa' (CAPPA) , suggest that the privatisation of water provision in the city will have severe consequences for their livelihoods. Where less than 40% of the city have access to water, water here again serves as a divisive tool, with the poor set to suffer disproportionately from privatisation. These activists seek to protect the vulnerable communities that may not have the political voice to protect themselves, with  questions of power and governance embedded within the video.

In 2022,  over 1.7 billion people  still do not have basic sanitation services. The World Health Organisation (WHO) further reports that of this 1.7 billion,   494 million defecate in open spaces .  Numbers are useful. But let's add some context to these statistics.   Sanitation has historically been an after-thought to development, which is reflected in the use of non-specific and non-contextual sanitation policy. The reliance upon a  global, standardised monitoring programme  is ineffective in achieving acceptable sanitation access. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme defines households as having improved sanitation when they  ‘use a facility that is not shared with other households’, and is either: a flush toilet, a ventilated improved pit latrine, a composting toilet, or a pit latrine with a slab.  It is important to note that ‘improved’ in no means equals safe, and  the WHO itself recognises this constraint upon the term . What counts as safe is highly differentiated bet