Maroussia Klep in Official Wire: Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest coverage for access to sanitation services worldwide, with more than 70 percent of the population still lacking access to toilets and hand-washing facilities. In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set the target of reducing by half the number of people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015. If current rates of progress do not increase in the region, it is not expected to meet its sanitation target for another 200 years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).“The UN system is trying to push, but if national government leaders are not interested it means that funding will not come forward and that the women, men, and children in those countries will not get safe water and decent sanitation,” Dick de Jong, Advocacy and Communication Officer at the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, told MediaGlobal.
However, some countries in the region demonstrated good results in recent years, spreading optimism about progress toward the MDGs. Rwanda stands as a frontrunner, being the sole sub-Saharan country to achieve its goals so far with 58 percent of the population now possessing access to basic sanitation services.
One essential lesson: strong political motivation more than economic development, is the key for fostering improvements in the delivery of sanitation services. Countries in the region that witness improving political stability, like Rwanda, have seen significant improvement in recent years, compared to countries in which the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was increasing but unaccompanied by political reforms....
Bridge over the Kagera River in Rwanda, shot by Abdallah Majid Nassor, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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