Sanitation and cell phones tell a particularly African story

Only one in six Kenyan households has access to a sewage system in a country with near-universal access to cell phone service, a new study shows.

Kenya is one of the worst-performing countries in access to sewerage, and is among 20 African countries in which fewer than 20 per cent of households have access to proper toilet facilities. In contrast, 98 per cent of Kenyans have access to cell phone services, while 97 have access to improved roads (paved, murram or tarred).

The study by think tank Afrobarometer, which covered 35 countries, found that the rate of cellphone proliferation in Africa is unmatched by the other four infrastructural indicators it examined, which were electricity connection, piped water, tarmacked roads and sewerage systems, ranked in that order.

Overall, North African countries were found to have the highest rates of infrastructure development on all four indicators, while East African countries had the lowest. The average availability of cell phone services across all 35 countries is 93 per cent, with Mauritius, Algeria, and Gabon having achieved universal coverage.

31 BILLION A YEAR

The report reflects the findings of the recently released Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2014, which shows that only 23 per cent of households in Kenya have improved toilet or latrine facilities that they do not share.  Nation Newsplex found that in addition, only eight per cent of the population used improved toilet facilities with a flushing system of any sort.

Lack of easy access to improved water and sanitation matter because they limit the quantity of safe drinking water available while increasing the risk of illness. Unimproved water sources and sanitation facilities increase the spread of waterborne diseases and impose higher healthcare costs. 

Improved water sources include piped water into the dwelling, yard or plot, a public tap, standpipe or borehole. Unimproved water sources include open wells or springs, water delivered by tanker trucks and surface water.

Nearly 40 per cent of rural households spend half an hour or longer to obtain water for drinking.

Kenya’s stinky state of sanitation and sewerage systems was highlighted in a 2015 UN report on wastewater management that warned the country is losing Sh31 billion— or 0.9 per cent of GDP annually – due to poor sanitation.

The situation is equally bad, or worse, around the continent. Sewerage was found to be most lacking in Malawi, where only three per cent of the population has access to proper sewerage. Niger, the next lowest-ranked, has seven per cent coverage, while Uganda, Tanzania and Sierra Leone all have nine per cent coverage.

At the opposite of the ranking is Algeria which provides proper sewerage to 95 per cent of its population, achieving the near-universal status enjoyed by more developed countries.

The study, titled Building on Progress: Infrastructure Development Still a Major Challenge in Africa, found access to safe drinking water to be another poorly performing infrastructural indicator.

PIPED WATER

Fewer than half of Kenyans (46 per cent) have access to piped water, which is below the average of 63 per cent for the 35 countries involved in the study. The share of people who access water inside their dwelling or plot drops even lower to less than to one in four (23 per cent), according to the recently released 2014 KDHS. 

Newsplex also found that only one in eight people in rural areas access water piped into a dwelling or plot, compared to four in 10 in urban areas. That is not surprising, given that nearly 40 per cent of rural households spend half an hour or longer to obtain water for drinking, compared with only 11 per cent of urban households.

According to the Afrobarometer study, Mauritius and Egypt have attained universal coverage in the availability of piped water, while Algeria is nearly there at 97 per cent coverage.

Fourteen of the 35 countries, including Kenya, cannot provide access to piped water to even 50 per cent of their population.  Liberia lags farthest behind, with piped water available in only 17 per cent of the country.

GRID CONNECTIVITY

Electricity is the second best performing infrastructural indicator overall after cellphone services, with 65 per cent of areas surveyed found to have an electricity grid that most houses could connect to. This is understandable, given the relationship between electrify and mobile phones.

Kenya has posted a particularly impressive rate, with the Afrobarometer survey showing that access to electricity grid has shot up from a paltry 38 per cent in 2005/2006 to the current 83 per cent.  While the number of households that can access electricity grid has jumped, only one in three (36 per cent) are actually connected, according to the latest KDHS.

The majority of households in urban areas (68 per cent) have electricity while the vast majority of rural households (87 per cent) do not.  Of the 18 countries surveyed, only Egypt and Mauritius were found to have universal electric grid connectivity.

Kenya’s biggest gains were to be found in improved roads, where it was found that 97 per cent of all areas surveyed had access to modern roads ((paved, murram or tarred). This is second only to Mauritius which has a universal coverage of 100 per cent.

The report attributes the sharp increase in road development to aggressive infrastructure development and recognises the impact of devolution, given that much of the development has been done by the county governments, which came into existence after the 2013 election.

Overall, North African countries were found to have the highest rates of infrastructure development on all four indicators, with East African countries performing the worst of all regions on the continent.

In addition, availability of infrastructure, is still heavily skewed towards urban dwellers. People who live in rural areas are still less likely to have access to piped water, tarmacked roads and electricity connectivity, even if mobile phone coverage was shared out more equally between rural and urban dwellers.

The Afrobarometer report concludes that its findings show a lack of certain essential infrastructure is related to the experience of poverty, but not necessarily that better infrastructure causes reductions in poverty.