Abstract:
Water is an indispensable natural resource, which, apart from
its importance in the industrial sector, is mostly used by women
at the domestic level everywhere, particularly in Africa. While
industrialisation has made quality potable water accessible to
women in cities and urban areas, this is unfortunately not the case
in rural areas and thus poses a major challenge to the realisation
of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals
in Nigeria. In cities and urban areas, people have managed to
establish reliable water sources through boreholes, for example,
while rural dwellers are still dependent on government intervention,
philanthropies and non-governmental organisations to be able
to have access to water of adequate quality. Considering the
geographic location of South Africa, its peculiar water problem
could be expected to be worse than in Nigeria. On the contrary,
the South African government’s involvement in water-renewable
techniques and other strategies in making quality water available
to all its citizens differs from the situation in Nigeria. This article
illustrates that the right to water as a natural resource, to which
citizens are entitled as a component of the right to development, is anchored in law. To ensure the realisation of this right, we
draw inspiration from academic and industrial approaches and
water-renewable techniques for development, improvement, and
implementation in South Africa to suggest ways for Nigeria to
improve on its water strategy.
