Water in the challenging African world, why i call it challenging is about the mode of collection..... find the details about the subject.

Introductory remarks about the subject
Currently, more than two-thirds of the population in Africa must leave their home to fetch water for drinking and domestic use. The time burden of water fetching has been suggested to influence the volume of water collected by households as well as time spent on income generating activities and child care. This has been noted for centuries and its clear that most time is wasted on fetching water by households especially women and children. Since women are the world's principal food producers and providers and are assuming an increasing role in agriculture, partly because of the rural-to-urban migration of men. Women and female children spend more than 10 million person - years carrying water from distant sources every year.

Millions Of Women Take A Long Walk With A 40-Pound Water Can
A few years back, its observed that even elderly women are actively involved in fetching water and i noted this from my community when i found an old woman with a can of water on her head heading home. She looked far too old to carry the water home herself, so he was relieved to see me offering a hand until she realized that i was just making sure she had successfully reached home safely. In parts of the world without running water, people must rely on an alternative
instead of walking long distances to get water.

It's a physically demanding, time-consuming responsibility and one that almost always falls to females and children. I found that in all of the countries, in households where a family member has to spend more than 30 minutes to collect water, the primary collectors were women and a small percentage kids. When the chore is a kid's job, there's still a major gender gap: 62 percent for girls versus 38 percent for boys.
From knowing all these statistics about the women and children who are collectively involved in the water collection activities and so forth, its is very important o understand the various sources of water for the traditional African community and what challenge they face.

Drainage and water sources in Africa

Africa appears blessed with abundant water resources: large rivers include the Congo, Nile, Zambezi and Niger and Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest. But Africa is the second driest continent in the world, after Australia, and millions of Africans still suffer from water shortages throughout the year. Shortages are often due to problems of uneven distribution - sometimes there is much water where there are fewer people - and also to management of existing supplies that could be improved. One example of the disparity in water availability lies in the Congo basin where 30 per cent of the continent’s water drains land inhabited by only 10 per cent of Africa’s population.
These sources of water many centuries have been used and now as the world is developing so greatly, these sources have now been over exploited leading to the scarcity and also poor water sanitation mostly from urban centres.

Why is water collection in Africa very big challenge?

In Africa, most of the work of fetching water for the household is done by women. This has been done for many years perhaps generations and generation but i noted that this kind of work is tedious especially if you try to do as a man. This has been associated with tremendous health effects to women who spend most of their life fetching water especially from far water sources.

Research has showed cases of permanent damage to women's health attributed to carrying water. These problems range from chronic fatigue, spinal and pelvic deformities, to effects on reproductive health such as spontaneous abortions. In some parts of Africa, where women expend as much as 85% of their daily energy fetching water, the prevalence diseases like anaemia and other health problems are very high, all these associated with carrying water.
When it come to children, there are high chances of drowning especially to water sources which lack proper fencing and protection barriers like rails. This has been a big problem on the African continent simply because of the early involvement of children below 12 years in fetching water also associated to early marriages in the African traditional setting.

Conclusion
In Africa, since water is a major issue for sustainable development, efforts from the world bodies like the UN,NGOs, WHO and many other agencies which have flooded the African continent, safe water and community sanitation has been at their fore front to uplift the continent from the past misery and make it a better place.

African child @Uganda writer