Water & sanitation
In many developing countries large parts of the population have no regular access to improved drinking water. This situation is all the more blatant in rural areas.
In developing countries close to 76% of rural populations and close to 94% of urban populations have access to drinking water. The disparities are even larger for sanitation. For instance, only 39% of people living in rural areas have access to improved sanitation facilities as opposed to 71% of people living in cities. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region that is making slowest progress, with drinking water coverage at 58% and sanitation coverage at 31%.
The consequences are significant, because access to water and sanitation services remains closely related to the fight against poverty and the quality of life in general. Indeed, access to water and sanitation reduces the risks of diseases, and access to drinking water reduces the workload, especially for women and children, who very often do water chores.
The international community has committed to halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 (7th MDG).
Water supply and small-scale sanitation and BTC
Water and sanitation in Belgian development cooperation means (drinking) water supply, sewers and waste water treatment, the construction of toilets, waste management, dredging operations, integrated water management, awareness raising about hygiene, training of actors in the sector and institutional support.
Belgian cooperation has a long tradition in the field of hydraulics, namely in Morocco and Senegal, where it has been active in this sector for decades. Belgian support mainly concentrates on rural areas and urban peripheries with a “semi-urban” or “semi-rural” character.
Most of BTC interventions are financed by Belgium but there are also other donors who count on BTC for the execution of water projects. For instance, the water programmes in Rwanda, DR Congo and Tanzania are funded jointly by Belgium and EuropeAid (ACP-EU Water Facility). The programme in DR Congo is also funded by DFID and AFD.
The main challenges
To improve access to drinking water, the main challenge of the interventions is in ensuring the continuity of water service delivery. Whereas the installation of equipment is relatively simple, ensuring long-term service delivery remains delicate, especially in rural areas and outside cities, where the organisation of basic services is difficult and often more expensive.
To ensure continuity of services, optimal organisation of all actors concerned is essential. In general, strong training of water point managers is planned. At the same time, it is important that solutions are adapted to the needs and capacities of the users – both of men and women – and that the users learn to respect good hygienic practices and that they pay for the access to drinking water. The continuous search for technical solutions adapted to the context, in combination with the human side, capacity development, the institutional dialogue and the protection of the environment, makes supply of drinking water a complex and ever evolving sector, which, therefore, stands for much more than drilling wells and installing pipelines.
