Sub-Saharan Africa is off track to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on water sanitation and hygiene (WASH), an official of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said here Tuesday.
Fiachra McAsey, the deputy UNICEF country director to Ghana, said this at a press briefing ahead of a three-day international symposium to discuss Africa’s movement toward achieving the SDGs.
The symposium dubbed “All Systems Go Africa 2022” which opens Wednesday in Accra, the capital of Ghana, seeks to discuss the state of the infrastructure, regulatory, expertise, and financial systems that play critical roles in delivering water, sanitation and hygiene services across the continent.
McAsey said only 65 percent of the population in the region have access to basic water, 33 percent have access to basic sanitation, and one in every five persons lack access to any sanitation facilities and defecate in the open.
He attributed the slow movement to achieving the WASH targets in Africa to the constraints on public finances, which limited the amount of the public sector’s investment in WASH systems.
