Water in Africa: A Feminist Perspective

  Figure 1 Source: No Water Africa Cartoons, Frank Odoi  As stated in my last post, I want to challenge traditional stereotypes which include looking beyond views of Africa as a place of oppression for females. Yet, when I found out it is mostly the responsibility of women and girls to travel extreme distances to collect heavy water loads; I was pretty shocked. After weeks of researching the matter, I have recognised the importance to use a human ecology lens to highlight how physical ecosystems can significantly cause a domino effect upon the social systems of humans (Marten, 2001) . So, for this blog post, I want to first contextualise water scarcity in Africa as a matter of concern for all of those at risk, especially females. Then, I hope to illuminate the role of women in water collection as it is intrinsically linked to patterns of water scarcity.   Many states in Africa fall into categories of water stress and scarcity as measured by  Falkenmark’s Water Stress...

Welcome to my blog: ‘‘Water in Africa: A Feminist Perspective’. I believe the Swahili proverb meaning “women are water”  (Taylor, 2004) explicitly embodies what to expect in the coming months: women and water cannot be separate entities of discussion.  For my first post, I focus my reasoning on this specific subtopic by briefly contextualising the multifaceted issues related to gender and water in Africa. I am interested to see how these problems relate to development geographies and in particular, the movement needed to target the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Why Africa?  Africa is one of the poorest continents in the world, affecting the amount of water in demand and the quality of water available. After watching the first lecture for my “Water and Development in Africa” module, it was a revelation to me that there IS enough water in Africa. Yes. You heard right. There is plenty of water in Africa. However, the problems surroundi...