The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a magnifying glass on pressing water and sanitation challenges in African cities, stressing and widening inequalities, especially for the 56% of the urban population living in informal settlements, lacking basic handwashing facilities, and relying on public water points and shared toilets.

"The politics of water have taken centre state in global concerns about sustainable development. This text investigates a new mode of achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people who lack access to safe water and sanitation by 2015."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The politics of water have taken centre stage in global concerns about sustainable development. "The Governance of Water and Sanitation in Africa" investigates a new mode of achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people who lack access to safe water and sanitation by 2015. Instead of aid delivered via deals between governments, an initiative arising out of the 2002 World Summit established multi-stakeholder partnerships involving the private sector, civil society and governments to work together in a more effective way.This title includes fieldwork and interviews with key players in Europe, South Africa, Zambia, Ghana and USA, and an examination of three partnerships in Africa, including the EU Water Initiative, that reveal that despite current weaknesses this model offers a promising mode of delivery in the long term. This book is invaluable for all those concerned with issues of water, sanitation and sustainable development, as well as the politics of international aid.

This book approached water and sanitation as an African gender and human rights issue. Empirical case studies from Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe show how coexisting international, national and local regulations of water and sanitation respond to the ways in which different groups of rural and urban women gain access to water for personal, domestic and livelihood purposes. The authors, who are lawyers, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists, explore how women cope in contexts where they lack secure rights, and participation in water governance institutions, formal and informal. The research shows how women - as producers of family food - rely on water from multiple sources that are governed by community based norms and institutions which recognise the right to water for livelihood. How these common pool water resources - due to protection gaps in both international and national law - are threatened by large-scale development and commercialisation initiatives, facilitated through national permit systems, is a key concern. The studies demonstrate that existing water governance structures lack mechanisms which make them accountable to poor and vulnerable water users on the ground, most importantly women. The findings thus underscore the need to intensify measures to hold states accountable, not just in water services provision, but in assuring the basic human right to clean drinking water and sanitation; and also to protect water for livelihoods.

This book systematically and comprehensively analyzes the legal development of the concept of water as a human right; its implications for the national governments, as well as the impact of the implementation of this concept for international and national organizations.