Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa water, Sanitation May-June2015 Vol. 10 No.3 | Page 27

Sanitation

Ethiopia: A Strong Case for Investment in Sanitation
By Bjorn Lomborg
Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), aimed at
improving the world as
much as possible over the
next fifteen years. Their
water and sanitation goal
helped two billion people
get better access.
Now, with the deadline
fast approaching, 193
national governments are
aiming to build on the
successes already achieved
and agree a new set of
targets to improve people’s
lives even more by 2030.
But resources and
capabilities are not
Photo: Siegfried Modola/IRIN File photo. infinite, so we have to get
this right. This is why the
There are plenty of things, which those of us lucky enough Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) has asked more
to live in the industrialised world take for granted; running than 60 teams of expert economists to analyse some of the
water and flush toilets are among the most basic of these.
more promising proposals put forward and make their own
2.5 billion - almost half the developing world - lack even
recommendations for which should make the final cut.
a basic latrine and one billion have to resort to what is
Get it right, and limited resources can be used to make
politely known as open defecation. In Ethiopia, over 58.6
a real difference to the world over the next 15 years. Get
million people in rural areas still lack basic sanitation, and
it wrong, and the world’s poorest are the ones who will
across sub-Saharan Africa it affects almost 450 million
suffer.
people.
So, what is the case for prioritsing clean water and
Around 750 million people have no access to any type of
sanitation?
basic source of drinking water. Each day, 136 million town
The most obvious benefit comes in the form of better
dwellers spend more than 40 minutes each day to fetch
health. Providing even basic latrines and hand washing
water. Each day, more than 600 million in rural areas use
facilities can make a big impact on the spread of disease.
more than an hour to fetch their water. In rural Ethiopia,
There are a number of water-borne infectious diseases that
almost 32 million people still lack basic water access, a fate
could be curtailed.
shared with nearly 275 million across sub-Saharan Africa.
The good news is that we can do something. Over the
The biggest and deadliest are those that cause diarrhoea,
past 25 years, more than two billion have gained access to
including cholera and a range of viral infections. These
better water and almost two billion to sanitation.
are a significant cause of death, particularly among young
children, but infected adults may be too ill to work, and
Moreover, it turns out to be a good investment. Investing
older children unfit to go to school.
a dollar in basic sanitation can provide three dollars worth
of benefits. Basic water supply into the home can do even
more good, giving more than four dollars in benefits for
each dollar spent. Getting rid of open defecation can help
to the tune of six dollars per dollar spent.
Doing this sort of analysis is difficult but very worthwhile.
At the turn of the century, the global community
committed to a set of targets under the umbrella of the
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • May - June 2015

The other big benefit is time-saving. The analysis of the
basic water supply and sanitation targets assumes that
people in rural villages no longer have to spend an hour
a day on average fetching water, but can collect the same
amount in 20 minutes.
Continued on page 28