Urban

The small narrow streets of unplanned urban areas pose a great challenge for water and sanitation projects.

Credit: WaterAid / Martin Punaks

For the first time in history, the majority of people now live in urban centres. Across the world, the growth of cities and towns is rapidly increasing not only through rural to urban migration but also through internal population growth.

In the developing world, urban environments pose a huge and growing challenge. Characteristically, these areas are unplanned, very densely populated and unserved by even the most basic water and sanitation infrastructure. It is estimated that between 30 and 60% of the urban population of sub-Saharan Africa has no access to the municipal water supply.

Where there is no safe water supply, people either collect from polluted sources or rely on vendors selling expensive water of dubious and unverified origin. A lack of sanitation facilities means that streets are turned into sites of open defecation and drainage channels become full of untreated sewage.

Urban water utilities are in urgent need of reform. Across all our country programmes we are working to secure the financial and operational autonomy of the utility from political interference and ensure a clear performance contract between the utility and the Government.

A complicating factor is the issue of land rights. Many unserved communities in urban areas are living in unplanned, or slum, settlements. The land on which they are built does not legally belong to the inhabitants and so Governments are usually reluctant to recognise their formal existence and therefore provide basic services.

However, WaterAid's partners have had success in slum areas in Bangladesh where people demonstrated their ability to pay their water bills, and so with our partner as guarantor, a connection to the municipal water supply and tariffs was made.

WaterAid is now spending 30% of its expenditure on our urban work and this looks set to rise. Along with enabling access to water, sanitation and hygiene education we are also supporting our partners in providing wider services like solid waste disposal, mass hygiene education campaigns and communal shower and clothes washing blocks.