Turning Africa's water crisis from an emergency to economic opportunity

Africa does not have a water problem. Africa has a water opportunity; what is missing is not the water, but the infrastructure, institutions, and financing needed to transform water into jobs, growth, food security, and resilience. Africa has seen its population grow from 800 million to 1.3 billion over the past two decades, but the availability of clean, safe water across the continent hasn’t kept pace. More than 400 million people in the region still lack access to safe drinking water, and more than 700 million have no access to basic sanitation. Recognizing the urgent need to advance on this issue, the government of Chad and the World Bank Group are hosting a summit this week to discuss what it will take—from governments, development partners, and the private sector—to accelerate progress at scale. As leaders chart a path forward together, one thing is abundantly clear: Africa’s water issues present a huge economic opportunity. The Nile has sustained economies for millennia. The Congo Basin discharges more freshwater into the ocean than any river system outside the Amazon. Lake Chad, Lake Victoria, the Niger, the Zambezi, the Senegal, the Chari, the Logone, and the Volta rivers form a network of shared natural assets that, combined, can power Africa’s economies and feed hundreds of millions of people. With more than 80 transboundary river and lake basins and the Nubian Sandstone, the need for Africa to develop shared goals and a unified approach is obvious. A collective, collaborative approach to water will generate benefits well beyond the sector itself. Globally, 1.7 billion jobs are in water-dependent sectors, including agribusiness, tourism, mining, and manufacturing—sectors likely to be engines for Africa’s future growth and job creation We must broaden how we view water, treating it not as a stand-alone sector but as the foundation for economic growth, human development, food security, and climate resilience. Water Forward, a global effort launched by the World Bank Group and partners, does exactly that. Along with its goal of delivering water security to more than a billion people by 2030, Water Forward aims to move water from a source of risk to a driver of jobs, growth, and resilience. At its core is making water systems investable, scalable, and capable of supporting regional prosperity. This presents a huge opportunity for Africa, a continent rich with water but lacking the infrastructure, institutions, and financing needed to put that water to work changing people’s lives. Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene remain major drivers of preventable disease, child mortality, and lost productivity. The burden falls heaviest on women and girls, who spend hours collecting water—time that could be spent in school or in income-generating work. Food security could also be vastly improved, notably through climate-smart irrigation on farms and stronger protection against floods and droughts. Agriculture employs more than 60 percent of Africa's workforce, yet about 95 percent of cultivated land depends on rainfall. Expanding investment in irrigation will not only strengthen food security, it will create jobs, boost productivity, and increase rural incomes. A Coordinated Approach Across Africa, countries are recognizing that water challenges cannot be solved in isolation. Shared river basins demand shared solutions through joint infrastructure, coordinated data, and collective political ownership. The approach most likely to result in rapid, consistent progress is a country-based one that has governments leading with reforms and investment plans. Only then can countries attract the necessary partners—development banks, governments, philanthropies, and the private sector— to help make the plans a reality on the ground. For Chad, this is a national priority. The Lake Chad Basin, once one of Africa’s largest freshwater bodies, has shrunk dramatically over the past half-century, putting pressure on the communities, economies, and ecosystems that depend on it. Collective region-wide action is essential. By convening and co-hosting the African Water forum, Chad is helping drive a broader shift: from fragmented responses to coordinated, scalable action. Three Priorities—and a Model to Deliver The path forward is clear: countries first need to adopt integrated, investment-ready water strategies that link people, food, and ecosystems, then convert these plans into bankable projects. The Water Forward initiative advances this through country-led Water Compacts that align governments and partners around bankable water investment pipelines. Second, they must mobilize financing at scale, bringing together public resources, private capital, and development finance around a single, government-led agenda. This requires finance ministers and water-sector leaders working together from the outset. Third, regional cooperation must be operationalized through joint investments, shared data systems, and strengthened basin governance. The potential benefits are enormous. Water is one of the most powerful development multipliers available to African countries. Every dollar invested in water security creates gains across healthcare, agriculture, energy, education, and economic productivity. Africa has both the vision and the water. What it needs now is collective action at scale. The commitments emerging from the African Water Forum should mark the beginning of a new phase, one focused on implementation, investment, and results. By working together, African countries, development partners, the private sector, and regional institutions can unlock water's full economic potential—making it one of Africa's greatest engines of growth, jobs, regional stability, resilience, and shared prosperity for generations to come. This blog was previously published in Jeune Afrique.