Among the challenges currently facing Africa, perhaps none is more important, nor more often overlooked, than the threat to the continent's supply of clean, fresh water. In most African sub-regions water is relatively scarce; throughout the continent, even where the supply itself is adequate in quantitative terms, the quality of the water is in serious decline. It is common knowledge that water is an essential resource for life on earth. What is unfortunately far less common is the knowledge of how to tend to this resource properly to ensure its availability for future generations.
Government policies have generally emphasized exploitation for development at the expense of conservation and sustainability. In most countries there is no single agency responsible for wetlands management, as there tends to be for agriculture and forestry. To complicate matters further, the major freshwater ecosystems in Africa are shared by multiple nations; if coordination within a country is difficult, the task is all the more daunting across political boundaries.
In immediate practical terms the water problem in Africa is a problem of management.
Do you agree and in what best ways do you think Africa can alleviate this problem?
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