Collecting Water – The Role of Women & Girls in Nigeria, Africa

  • In Sub-Saharan Africa, 71 percent of the burden of collecting water for households falls on women and girls.
  • Women in sub-Saharan Africa spend about 40 billion hours per year collecting water. 40 billion hours a year, it the total number of hours put in by the entire work force of the world 5th largest economy, with a GDP of $2.9 trillion: France.
  • In some African countries, girls school attendance was 15 percent higher for girls from homes located 15 minutes or less from a water source than for girls in homes one hour or more away.
  • In communities severely affected by water shortages, Women and girls are said to spent up to 6 hours each day collecting water.
  • Reductions in time spent collecting water have been found to correlate with increase school attendance across most water poor communitiesю
  • In some parts of Africa and Asia, women and children walk an average of 3.7 miles a day to collect water.

“I have to trek for up to 2 hours every morning to collect water, with my daughters. If there is a well in our village, I will spend less time collecting water, and daughters will be able to go to school every day.”

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References
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/mdg-report-2012.html

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2012/globalcosts.pdf

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet35en.pdf

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/3789/WPS5302.pdf?sequence=1

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