Water and Gender in Africa

  Gender Mainstreaming: " The number of women representatives in water projects and boards should not be the sole goal, neither the ultimate objective of gender mainstreaming. Having women in planning bodies alone doesn’t guarantee that gender issues are mainstreamed; it is  a much wider process. The presence of women in water projects won’t radically  influence the impact of the project if the  women have not been included in the design phase and if the projects have not integrated all gender needs and set objectives that are gender-sensitive and  beneficial for all "   (UNEP-DHI, 2021). Gender mainstreaming is often misunderstood, and as articulated in the quote above, it is much more than creating equality between men and women, including more women in development projects and increasing the number of women in leadership roles. Gender mainstreaming involves "the integration of gender perspectives in preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and eva...

 Physical and Human Causes of Water Stress: Sudan is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and if you revisit my previous blog, you will be able to see that Sudan, amongst many other African countries, is living under the conditions of being water stressed. According to the 2020 Global Climate Risk Report, North Kordofan is characterised by low levels of rainfall, extreme temperatures and drought (GIWPS, 2021) . Both rain-fed agriculture and pastoralism supports the livelihoods of over 80% of the population in North Kordofan (GIWPS, 2021) but due to the intensifying impacts of climate change, resources such as fresh water are being stressed. Although climate change is a contributory factor that is impacting the supply of water resources, water demand is expected to exceed water supply by 2030 (GIWPS, 2021) . Hence, population growth is a plausible explanation for water depletion as more water would be required to sustain livelihoods and households. Figure 1: Kharto...