Monitoring Groundwater Use as a Domestic Water Source by Urban Households: Analysis of Data from Lagos State, Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa with Implications for Policy and Practice

Abstract

The fundamental importance of groundwater for urban drinking water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly recognised. However, little is known about the trends in urban groundwater development by individual households and its role in securing safely-managed drinking water supplies. Anecdotal evidence indicates a thriving self-supply movement to exploit groundwater in some urban sub-Saharan African settings, but empirical evidence, or analysis of the benefits and drawbacks, remains sparse. Through a detailed analysis of official datasets for Lagos State, Nigeria we examine the crucial role played by groundwater and, specifically, by household self-supply for domestic water provision. We then set this in the context of Nigeria and of sub-Saharan Africa. One of the novelties of this multi-scalar approach is that it provides a granular understanding from large-scale datasets. Our analysis confirms the importance of non-piped water supplies in meeting current and future drinking water demand by households in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the role played, through self-supply, by groundwater. Our results demonstrate inconsistencies between datasets, and we make recommendations for the future. We argue that a key actor in the provision of drinking water supplies, the individual household, is largely overlooked by officially reported data, with implications for both policy and practice.

Self-supply groundwater in five communities: Moshie Zongo, Aboabo, Kotei, Ayeduase and Apemso in Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana

“…This suggests that the income level of residents did not influence the choice of their water source but they rather saw water as a necessity. These findings corroborates the works of [ 15 ] who stated that there was no differences in the choice of water type and the income level of residents. In addition, as stated by Ref.…”

“…Researchers have shown that in many cities around the world, water demand exceeds supply necessitating self-supply for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons include those beyond the reach of utilities [ 14 , 15 ], those served by municipal water systems, and those with insufficient water supplies [ 14 ]. Other reasons include rising population growth due to user demand and industrialization [ 15 ], increased awareness and low-cost technology, and a desire to source water locally [ 7 ], and as a long-term cost-cutting strategy [ 9 , 16 ].…”

Urban Self-Supply from Groundwater—An Analysis of Management Aspects and Policy Needs

“…Self-supply from groundwater provides a rapid solution in areas where it is technically feasible and affordable. Nevertheless, private groundwater use tends to pass under the radar of national water-supply statistics [12], or the phenomenon is not recognized at all by government [3,13].…”

“…In the last decade or so, the construction of private water wells for urban selfsupply has mushroomed in Sub-Saharan Africa [4,12,[25][26][27], but with significant quality concerns in many places [28]. This has occurred equally in cities such as Lusaka (Box 8) and Douala (Box 9), where local aquifers are also in major use by the water-supply utility, as in cities such as Mombasa (Box 10), where the municipal water-supply is imported from distant sources.…”

Human health risks of metals contamination in Shallow Wells around waste dumpsites in Abeokuta Metropolis, Southwestern, Nigeria

“…In Nigeria, groundwater is exploited for domestic water needs (Carrard et al, 2019;Healy et al, 2020;Villar, 2016). This is heightened by the steady rise in population growth which imposes further constraints on dwindling budgetary provisions on water supply infrastructure and facilities for the underserved population (Danert & Healy, 2021;WHO, 2019), and thus made shallow wells a common sight in urban Nigeria (Agava et al, 2018), the cheapest means of water provision (Danert & Healy, 2021). Anand et al (2021) noted that groundwater of this nature readily comes under attack from on-site excreta disposal systems, animal wastes, open dumping, and poses signi cant high risk to health of users (MacDonald & Pieper, 2017).…”