The Horn of Africa, the south of Madagascar, but also several Sahelian countries experienced very long and intense droughts between 2020 and 2022, plunging tens of millions of people into a real humanitarian crisis. A drama that has highlighted a persistent lack of involvement of States to respond to problems of access to water. The investment gap is estimated at 50 billion dollars per year (some 45 billion euros) by Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), an international partnership for universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene.
Only 500 million of the continent’s 1.3 billion people have access to safe drinking water and 290 million to basic sanitation services, according to a World Health Organization report (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published in 2022. While significant disparities exist within countries, in rural areas, four out of five people lack drinking water and three quarters of sanitation.
Ensuring “equitable access” to water and sanitation for all is one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined in 2015 by the UN to end extreme poverty, inequalities and fight against climate change. But, to reach it by 2030, it would be necessary to multiply by twelve the current rate of progress in terms of drinking water and by twenty that of sanitation, had alerted the WHO and Unicef during the World Forum. water from Dakar in March 2022.
Jean-François Basse has held the position of resident representative of Unicef in Madagascar since 2021. On the eve of his departure to take over the management of the Unicef office in Côte d’Ivoire, in Abidjan, he evokes the many challenges that remain to be raised.
Jean-François Basse The emergency decreed in the great south in the second half of 2021 by international agencies has been lifted. The situation is less dramatic, but this long period of drought has had serious consequences on the populations. In addition to food insecurity, child malnutrition and the economic impact, the lack of access to water has led to increased conflicts within families and communities and the dropout of children, monopolized by the drudgery of water, often far from the village.
This humanitarian crisis is fundamentally due to the lack of access to water. The government is now aware that the development of the country cannot be achieved without actively tackling this problem and that of sanitation. About half of the island’s population depends on “unimproved” water, that is, from small vendors, tankers, surface water and unprotected wells. The situation is even more critical in the south.
The international community must encourage the improvement of the governance of water resources and support structuring projects. To be effective, we need to link relief and development. Each time Madagascar is affected by a climatic catastrophe, the whole world has its eyes riveted on it. But this attention must be maintained outside of crises.
A big effort is being made to open up the south of the island, in particular thanks to the modernization of national road 13. The journey from Fort-Dauphin, where the airport is located, to Ambovombé, only lasts 2.5 hours place of 5 o’clock when I arrived. This is a game-changer, including for NGOs and international agencies for whom it was very difficult to reach the most remote populations in the region.
On the more specific issue of water, the government was convinced by the global approach that we had deployed in several dozen villages. It consists of creating a water point that serves both the survival of families, their hygiene, and to improve their means of subsistence: agriculture and livestock. The State therefore wishes to increase the number of beneficiary municipalities. But the hydrogeology of the region is very complex: the boreholes do not always work and, in the coastal zone, the aquifers often contain salt water, which complicates matters. We will therefore continue to support the Ministry of Water, Hygiene and Sanitation to carry out this policy.
UNICEF and the European Union Joint Research Center are also working with the ministry to develop a drought monitoring system in the south of the country. Mapping and early detection of droughts are invaluable in preventing water shortages and famines.
The country is on a good dynamic, but several social indicators remain worrying, so we must remain vigilant. Growth in the country fell from 5.7% in 2021 to 3.8% in 2022. This should not affect the projects launched in recent months. I can only hope that the political will and commitment to development will not waver.