Access to clean, affordable, and safe drinking water is both a fundamental human right recognized by the United Nations and Goal 6 of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. However, access to this essential resource in Africa is not yet universal, with 1 in 3 Africans facing water scarcity and approximately 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lacking access to a basic drinking water. Indeed, addressing climate change and poor management of water resources and services is paramount to tackling Africa’s water stress.

Aqueduct, an online geographic information system (GIS) tool produced by the WRI to map global water-related risks, reveals Africa’s extensive exposure to water-related risks. Their model accounts for a variety of metrics, such as vulnerability to floods and droughts, water stress, and seasonal variability.

The authors maintain that understanding the continent’s water risk factors is an essential prerequisite to instituting changes to the poor management of its water resources and services, alongside bolstering climate resilience. As such, the authors highlight several areas within the water sector that require investment to improve climate resilience and better public service delivery.

Africa’s agricultural sector, the authors claim, is poised to face significant exposure to water-related climate risks in the future. As 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population depends on agriculture as their primary source of income and more than 95 percent of the region’s farming is reliant on rainfall, the consequences of unpredictable rainfall, rising temperatures, extreme drought, and lower crop yields expose one of Africa’s poorest communities to increasingly intense climate- and water-related hazards. Considering these hazards, WRI proposes that intergovernmental risk-pooling mechanisms, such as the African Union’s African Risk Capacity (ARC), could be increasingly important sovereign insurance mechanisms to mitigate climate disasters, as they provide faster payouts than humanitarian aid.

Read the full article about solutions to water scarcity in Africa by Leo Holtz and Chris Heitzig at Brookings.