Report by the secretariat to the committee on natural resources development in Africa: issues,challenges and activities of the economic commission for Africa: water resources

Abstract

In the water sector, Africa is in an anomalous situation of abundance on one side and acute scarcity on the other. The continent as a whole is well endowed with freshwater resources. However, these resources are unevenly distributed, both temporally and spatially.Consequently, while large river systems in the rain-forest zones of South and Central! Africa drain away a huge amount of overland freshwater {mostly unutilized) to the oceans during the wet seasons, a large part of the region also suffers from severe drought and desertification during the dry seasons. While Sub-Saharan Africa is endowed with huge reservoirs of groundwater; most of it is yet to be exploited and developed, resulting in acute water shortages in most of these countries. In most of North Africa, the rainfall rate is well below world average resulting in the slow replenishment rate of its surface and groundwater resources.