To what extent is inequality a factor in water access?

Saturday was World Toilet Day, a day marked by the UN to highlight the importance of toilets worldwide.

And it is true, they are of great importance. Toilets, though something often not paid much attention, are the centres of a multitude of social distinctions.

‘Almost two-thirds of Ghanaians (64%) are at risk of engaging in open defecation because they do not have toilets in their homes or in their compounds. This proportion has hardly changed since 2012(65%).’ Similar instances can be found across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Reading around the matter, one of the main ideas that has become apparent is that of inequality. Despite much easier, more sustainable and cheaper alternatives to the porcelain ‘flush’ toilet that we are all used to in our homes, the latter carries a certain image. With references to colonial legacy, these toilets are possessed by the highest income groups, with fully piped water supply, and have thereby become both a symbol of status, as well as ‘civility’  in many urban centres in Africa. This is furthered by narratives such as that offered in an article by The Economist  linking flushing toilets with progress (echoing modernisation discourses). With flushing toilets thereby seen as the ultimate goal, other attempts at toilet provisioning can be seen as ‘not good enough’ or have cultural stigmas attached to them. Inequality thereby increases inequality by producing a negative cycle.

Even in those areas where toilets have been implemented inequality is an issue, with the privately owned stalls being too much for many too afford. Joel Nkako (Kenyas' Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (Tatiana Thieme Lecture 2016)), in 2010 made some important points in relation to toilet provisioning:

‘You have to see the coverage and access and usage of facilities like latrines. Sometimes we use a single word, like when we say we want to scale up latrine ‘coverage’. What we mean is we want many people to use toilets and maybe stop open defecation. But when we use the word coverage, it does not ensure usage or access, because if we walk around we’ll find places where toilets are locked. They are used by specific people, and excluding others. And access also does not translate into proper usage.’

The reason I mention all of this is because I feel there exist parallels between inequalities surrounding toilet access to access to water. For the rest of this post I want to make apparent these parallels and demonstrate the importance of inequality in understanding access to water in Africa’s urban centres.

The poor paying more for less?

The way in which I hope to draw some parallels starts with the Joel Nkako quote just mentioned above.

Firstly, the statement: ‘when we use the word coverage, it does not ensure usage or access’. This idea can also be used to explore issues surrounding water access in Africa. It has been made clear that when understanding access to water, National Water Scarcity metrics are unhelpful. Those in the  slums of Nairobi face shortages of clean water, whilst their neighbours in affluent suburbs have enough water not only for household use, but enough to keep swimming pools filled (UNDP, 2006: 80) . Clearly therefore, there is much more to inability to access water than national metrics. Rather, it is the destructing issue of inequality.

A second part of Joel Nkako’s speech can also relate to water issues and help us understand this inequality to a greater level: “[Toilets] are used by specific people… excluding others.” Doing research into water inequalities in African urban centres and I was shocked to find the statement that, in regard to water  ‘the poor pay more – and get less water’. Looking further and I found that it is true: 'People living in the slums of Nairobi... actually pay 5 to 10 times more for water than those in high income areas of [the] same city'. Amartya Sen’s theory of entitlements is able to help us understand this paradox further. Drawing attention ‘to market structures, institutional rules and patterns of service provision’, this theory refers ‘not to rights or moral claims in a normative sense but the ability of people to secure a good or service through a legally recognised and enforceable claim on a provider’ (UNDP, 2006: 80).

‘Entitlements’ help us understand how those with enough income are able to afford piped water supply to be fitted into their homes. It also helps us understand how poorer persons can often only access this piped supply through vendors or water kiosks which - due to economies of scale, and the hiking up of price as the water passes through the marketing chain - ends up costing much more per unit for the poor. This can be up to twice the price of piped supplies (Thompson, 2000). (The same can be said of private communal toilets where often the price per use is too much for parents to justify infants or themselves using). Due to this high cost therefore the poorest have to spread out their access to water, including low quality and long distance sources. Clearly therefore economic inequality has vast impacts on water access for poorer persons.  

The last parallel I wish to briefly make (although I stress this is in no ways a small issue that much time could be dedicated to) is that of gender inequality. Both the act of collecting water and using the toilet are risky acts for women, where they are often vulnerable to attack on route. ‘To avoid this, women and girls avoid drinking, and hold back the urge to go to the toilet for long periods of time, risking dehydration, bladder and kidney infections, and other health impacts’, Léo Heller, UN Special Rapporteur on Human rights to water and sanitation states.

I am not trying to say that access to toilets and access to water are the same issue in any sense. Rather, I have used a comparison here to highlight a core issues that both suffer from: that of inequality. In response to the title’s question, I believe that inequality is a massive component in determining shortage of access to clean water. The human right to water ‘entitles everyone to sufficient, safe acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use’. More needs to be done to reduce inequalities that interfere with this right.

Many of the issues stated here about water access can be related back to private vs. public debates around water servicing. Next week's post will be aiming to untangle that debate. This post can therefore be viewed as a precursor to next weeks, where some of the themes mentioned will be reiterated. I look forward to looking into it.


UNDP (2006) Human Development Report 2006: Beyond Scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Thompson et al., (2000) Waiting at the tap: changes in urban water use in East Africa over three decades, Environment and Urbanisation, 12, 2, 37-52.