The main causes of water scarcity in Africa are physical and economic water scarcity, rapid population growth, and the effects of climate change on the water cycle. Water scarcity is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. The rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa is highly seasonal and unevenly distributed, leading to frequent floods and droughts.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported in 2012 that growing water scarcity is now one of the leading challenges for sustainable development.FAO (2012). Coping with water scarcity - An action framework for agriculture and food security, FAO Rome. This is because an increasing number of river basins have reached conditions of water scarcity. The reasons for this are the combined demands of agriculture and other sectors. Water scarcity in Africa has several impacts. They range from health, particularly affecting women and children, to education, agricultural productivity and sustainable development. It can also lead to more water conflicts.
To adequately address the issue of water scarcity in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa emphasizes the need to invest in the development of Africa's potential water resources. This would improve food security and water security, and protect economic gains by effectively managing droughts, floods and desertification.
Scale
Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any other place on the planet and of an estimated 800 million people who live in Africa, 300 million live in a water-stressed environment. In 2012, it was estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress. This would will likely displace anywhere between 24 million and 700 million people as conditions become increasingly unlivable.
Africa is the second driest continent in the world, with millions of Africans still suffering from water shortages throughout the year. These shortages are attributed to problems of uneven distribution, population growth and poor management of existing supplies. Sometimes there are smaller numbers of people residing where there is large amount of water. For example, 30 percent of the continent's water lies in the Congo Basin inhabited by only 10 percent of Africa's population.
There is significant variation in the rainfall patterns observed in different places and time. There is also high evaporation rates in some parts of the region resulting in lower percentages of precipitation in such places.
However, there is very significant inter- and intra-annual variability of all climate and water resources characteristics, so while some regions have sufficient water, Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license. sub-Saharan Africa faces numerous water-related challenges that constrain economic growth and threaten the livelihoods of its people. African agriculture is mostly based on rain-fed farming, and less than 10% of cultivated land in the continent is irrigated. The impact of climate change and variability is thus very pronounced.
Scale As of the mid-2020s, water scarcity directly impacts approximately one in three African citizens. Data indicates that over 411 million people across the continent lack access to safe drinking water, while roughly 56% of African households experience routine water shortages. The compounding effects of rapid population growth and climate-induced droughts have placed close to 230 million Africans under conditions of severe water scarcity, with up to 460 million individuals residing in water-stressed regions. Furthermore, infrastructure deficits require sub-Saharan residents to travel an average of 30 minutes daily to secure basic water access.
Examples
Ghana
Economic water scarcity in Ghana is heavily driven by illegal small-scale gold mining, locally referred to as galamsey. This activity has caused severe chemical and heavy silt pollution across major river basins, including the Bonsa, Pra, and Ayensu rivers. In January 2025, the national utility provider, Ghana Water Limited, suspended operations at the Tarkwa treatment plant due to extreme turbidity levels caused by mining activities along the River Bonsa; this facility typically supplies approximately 75% of the region's potable water. Similar emergency shutdowns due to high turbidity occurred later in 2025 at the Kwanyako Headworks situated along the Ayensu River, illustrating how unregulated environmental degradation directly disrupts domestic utility infrastructure.
According to the Water Resources Commission of Ghana, over 60% of water bodies in mining regions are now considered polluted due to these activities. Waste management practices that lead to the dumping of plastics and sewage into water sources, these issues increase the water crisis, endangering both human health and biodiversity.
Nigeria In Nigeria, economic water scarcity is prominently exemplified by the urban infrastructure deficits within the Lagos megacity. With a municipal population exceeding 24 million, public distribution networks managed by the Lagos Water Corporation remain highly inadequate relative to overall demand. To compensate for the deficit in piped infrastructure, residents have drilled an estimated 200,000 private boreholes across the metropolitan area. This widespread and unregulated extraction has led to heavy groundwater over-abstraction, accelerating coastal saltwater intrusion into freshwater aquifers. Additionally, shallow aquifers face extensive contamination from nearby septic systems and unlined landfills, which contributed directly to public health emergencies such as the late 2024 cholera outbreak that recorded over 4,600 cases across the region.
Regional variance Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are progressing towards the Millennium Development Goal on water at different paces. While Northern Africa has 92% safe water coverage, Sub-Saharan Africa remains at a low 60% of coverage—leaving 40% of the 783 million people in that region without access to clean drinking water.
Some of these differences in clean water availability can be attributed to Africa's extreme climates. Although Sub-Saharan Africa has a plentiful supply of rainwater, it is seasonal and unevenly distributed, leading to frequent floods and droughts. Additionally, prevalent economic development and poverty issues, compounded with rapid population growth and rural-urban migration have rendered Sub-Saharan Africa as the world's poorest and least developed region. Thus, this poverty constrains deprive many cities in this region from providing clean water and sanitation services as well as preventing the further deterioration of water quality even when opportunities exist to address these water issues. Additionally, the rapid population growth leads to an increased number of African settlements on flood-prone and high-risk land.
The latest report of the SDG goal 6 has mentioned various facts about water status in sub-Saharan Africa including the lack of hygiene and its impact on the nutritional status especially among children due to increased rate of infectious diseases. Also, almost 1/3 of the sub-Saharan population are in danger of hunger due to lack of access to food. Furthermore, sub-Saharan Africa lacks access to safe drinking water by 76% while only 6% of Europe and Northern America is not covered.
Causes
Physical and economic scarcity Water scarcity is both a natural and human-made phenomenon, which can be divided into two broad categories: economic scarcity and physical scarcity. Economic scarcity refers to the fact that finding a reliable source of safe water is time-consuming and expensive; physical scarcity is refers to an insufficient amount of water within a given region based on the present needs of the population.
The 2006 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimates that 300 million out of the 800 million who live on the African continent live in a water-scarce environment. Specifically in the very north of Africa, as well the very south of Africa, the rising global temperatures accompanying climate change have intensified the hydrological cycle that leads to drier dry seasons, thus increasing the risk of more extreme and frequent droughts. This significantly impacts the availability, quality and quantity of water due to reduced river flows and reservoir storage, lowering of water tables and drying up of aquifers in the northern and southern regions of Africa.
Included in the category of physical scarcity is the issue of overexploitation. This is contributing to the shrinking of many of Africa's great lakes, including the Nakivale, Nakuru and Lake Chad, which has shrunk to 10% of its former volume. In terms of policy, the incentives for overuse are among the most damaging, especially concerning ground water extraction. For ground water, once the pump is installed, the policy of many countries is to only constrain removal based on the cost of electricity, and in many cases subsidize electricity costs for agricultural uses, which damages incentives to conserve such resources. Additionally, many countries within Africa set the cost of water well below cost-recovery levels, thus discouraging efficient usage and threatening sustainability.
Population growth Over the past century, the global population has more than doubled. Africa's population is notably the fastest growing in the world. It is expected to increase by roughly 50% over the next 18 years, growing from 1.58 billion people today(2026) to over 2.36 billion in 2035. In fact, Africa will account for nearly half of global population growth over the next two decades. There is also a simple but appreciable equation that, as population increases, so does water demand. At the same time, the water resources in African region are gradually diminishing due to the habitation in places that were previously water sources. As the population increases rapidly, there is urgent demands for improved health, quality of life, food security and 'lubrication' of industrial growth, which also place severe constraints on the water available to achieve these goals.
The growing population will only exacerbate the water scarcity crisis as more pressure is placed on the availability and access of water resources. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, today, 41% of the world's population lives in river basins that are under water stress. This raises a major concern as many regions are reaching the limit at which water services can be sustainably delivered. Globally, about 55 percent of the world's population live in urban areas, and by 2030, there might be a 5 percent increase in this ratio. This is the same experience in Africa. Big cities like Lagos, Kinshasa and Nairobi have doubled their population within a fifteen years period. Although people are migrating into these urban cities, the availability of fresh water has stayed the same, or in some cases reduced. The rising population in African cities creates a link to the imbalance between the supply of water and the demands in those cities.
Aside urbanization contributing to the imbalance between the demand and supply of water, urbanization also causes an increase in water pollution. As a result of more people moving into cities, there is increased deposit of sewage and waste into water bodies. In developing countries, over 90 percent of the sewage generated are disposed into water bodies and left untreated. Also, sewage system are inefficiently run, such that leaks from sewage pipes are left unattended to, which eventually leak into the soil and causes further pollution of underground water.
Climate change