COVID-19
The pandemic and Africa’s water industry
Water usage patterns have changed all round the world due to populations in lockdown spending more time at home. By Dr Jo Burgess*
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he morning ablution peak has shifted to late morning, and domestic water consumption has increased by 15% to 25%, while non-domestic has decreased by 30% to 50%. In Africa, this is a critical issue because there are fewer domestic customers on metered water connections than elsewhere in the world, which means that a much higher proportion of the water that water service providers are supplying is not being paid for. The result is depressed revenue at exactly the time when utilities desperately need income to extend water and sanitation services to unserved communities.
Covid-19 response challenges
Africa has issues of managing Covid-19 in communities that do not have access to running water, and do not have the ability to self-isolate. Consider the minimum requirements for a lockdown to be effective: access to safe drinking water in the home; access to adequate sanitation in the home; a source of reliable energy; access to information or communications technology; and having
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a permanent source of income or savings. If the first three requirements are not met, then almost all household members will need to make multiple daily trips to places where other people congregate, such as communal taps and communal ablution blocks (CABs). Seemingly simple steps to battle the spread of Covid-19, like regularly washing hands with soap and water, present fundamental challenges. While facing the global issues of sourcing personal protective equipment, social distancing and operating with a scaled-back workforce, the African water industry has mobilised to assist the poorest customers, both domestic and commercial, with access to a supply of safe water. In South Africa, organisations have banded together to provide resources like multilingual advice for people using CABs. The Department of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation has procured 41 000 water tanks and is providing them to small or rural municipalities to enable them to supply potable water to unserved communities.
Most utilities, for example in Ghana, South Africa, Malawi and Uganda, are supporting the vulnerable and are trying to remobilise their capital programmes. Research-wise, the monitoring of genetic material from the inactive virus found in sewerage systems could provide a rapid early detection method to identify its presence in communities and lead to targeted lockdowns. This approach, often termed wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), has some potential advantages over case-by-case tracking, including improved throughput at the community level and tracking asymptomatic cases. This is a hot research topic right now, with universities, utilities and
