In general, Kenya is a dry country; about four-fifths of the land is considered arid or semi-arid. The land considered useful for agriculture only occupies about 17 percent of the nation’s area; throughout the country, average yearly rainfall ranges from 200 mm (in the north) to over 1,800 mm on the sides of Mt. Kenya (The Encyclopedia of Earth, 2008). Ironically, the economy of the country centers around the agricultural part of the country; agricultural products bring in about 30 percent of the nation’s income. When droughts come, they can send Kenya’s economy into severe depression. The fact that the agricultural portion of the Kenyan GDP fluctuates so much from year to year has mostly to do with the fact that weather has varying influences on the productivity of Kenyan agriculture (Marshall 2011).
Over the years, the water crisis in Kenya has seen some abatement recently, but there are still millions of families in Kenya who rely on livestock and crops for income and even survival. As a result, thousands of Kenyans pass away each year because of hunger and thirst. The World Bank (2010) reports that mortality rates for adults, infants and children under five have increased in Kenya since 1990 (Marshall 2011). IN addition to appearing in short supply, a great deal of the water that does make its way to Kenyans is contaminated in one of three ways, carrying diseases that are water-based, water-borne or water-washed. As a result, it is vital that Kenya find solutions to the water crisis so that the citizenry has access to agricultural production and can feed themselves and their families – and contribute surplus crops and livestock to the economy – and that people can drink the water that they receive without worrying that they will end up suffering from a potentially fatal disease.
One of the most fatal water-based dise6ases in Kenya is malaria. Each year, 26,000 children are estimated to die because of malaria, and an estimated 3.5 million children five years old and younger are at risk of contracting the disease. The mosquito that carries malaria settles in the western highlands as well as in the lake and coastal regions (Government of Kenya, 2006). Throughout the country, it is the most commonly contracted disease, but in four provinces (Nyanza, Coastal, Eastern and Western) it is particularly virulent; all of those provinces are by big bodies of water. Cholera is the most common water-borne disease that strikes Kenyans; people contract it by coming into contact with contaminated water, especially by drawing water out of wells that are contaminated with the disease. This happens most frequently in Kenya when wells are dug too close to pit latrines (Marshall 2011).
A water-based infection that causes problems in Kenya is schistosomiasis, commonly called snail fever. Two parasitic snails cause this condition, which primarily affects people between 10 and 20 years of age because of their greater frequency of contact with water bodies containing the snails and as a result of defecation. The Bulinus worm is indigenous to small pools, streams, small water holes and also takes refuge near dams. The other snail, Biomphalaria, is also found near dams as well as in irrigation channels. It can bury itself in the bottom, allowing it to take up residence in water bodies that move more swiftly (Government of Kenya, 2006).
One proposed solution is the rehabilitation of 600 hydrometrological stations along with the implementation of a new hydro-metric, for installation in groundwater resources as well as in surface water. The purpose of this is to keep an eye on ongoing available water so that policy planners have information that is recent and relevant about the existing state of fresh water supplies in Kenya.
One of the more ambitious water enhancement projects involves the development of a pair of dams that would store 2.4 billion cubic meters, along the Nyando and Nzoia rivers. A collection of 24 smaller dams, which would combine to store 2 billion cubic meters, would provide water for irrigation, livestock, and domestic use throughout the semi arid and arid lands throughout the rest of Kenya. There is also a proposed national supply sanitation project that would seek to augment the Mzima pipeline so that it is adequate for the needs of the coastal developments, as well as provide water supply and sanitation for the towns surrounding Kisii, Nakuru, Kisumu, Mombasa, and Nairobi, which would be another way to diversify the Kenyan economy beyond agriculture (Mogaka, Gichere, Davis & Hirji 2006).
In addition to developing specific projects, another helpful step in ensuring that fresh, clean water reaches more Kenyans is to change the overall culture in policy planning when it comes to water projects as well as other forms of expansion and development. Moving toward a culture of mutual participation among all stakeholders, decentralization of authority and a commitment to sustainability will keep the needs of the drinking public in mind when new projects of any type come up for consideration.
Education in cleanliness with water handling is also an important part of ensuring that fewer Kenyans suffer from these diseases. A study by Kimani-Murage and Ngindu (2007) found that in the urban slums in the country, 91 percent of people used water from wells as their primary drinking source, leaving only 9 percent using tap water.
Another factor in the situation is the swift growth of population within Kenya. The World Bank (2010) reported that Kenya had approximately 23 million people in 1990 but had almost double that with 40 million in 2008. When you have that explosion in population size, you are going to have problems with access to fresh water. Even with the heavy growth, the vast majority of Kenyans (78 percent) still live in rural areas, which are often far from a healthy water infrastructure. This forces them to rely on wells for their drinking water, and as the researchers found, far too many wells in Kenya are too close to pit latrines to avoid fecal contamination, and far too many are too shallow to keep the contamination out (Kimani-Murage & Ngindu, 2007).
Across the world, approximately one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water for a variety of reasons, among them inequality, poverty and simple government incompetence (United Nations Development Program, 2006). People who do not have access to clean water have much poorer health outcomes and are simply unlikely to escape the cycle of poverty and early death. In Kenya, the failure to provide people with access to clean water is an outrage that needs to be addressed to provide dignity and basic human rights. Moving toward a culture that respects sustainability and an emphasis on progress for all will help Kenya in a number of ways, but giving the whole country access to fresh, clean water is a start.
References
Government of the Republic of Kenya (2006). Kenya national water
development report, prepared for the Second UN World Water Development Report ‘Water: A shared responsibility.’ Nairobi: Government of the Republic of Kenya, Ministry for Water and Irrigation. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001488/148866e.pdf.
Kimani-Murage, E. & Ngindu, A. (2007). Quality of water the slum dwellers use:
The case of a Kenyan slum. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 84 (6): 829-838.
Marshall, S. (2011). The water crisis in Kenya: Causes, effects and solutions.
Global Majority E-Journal 2 (1): 31-45.
Mogaka, H., Gichere, S., Davis, R. & Hirji, R. (2006). Climate variability and
water resources degradation in Kenya: Improving water resources development and management. Washington, DC: The World Bank, World Bank Working Paper No. 69).
United Nations Development Program (2006). Human development report 2006
– Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
World Bank (2010). World development indicators. Washington, DC: The World
Bank.
