Polish aid

However, this issue does not affect the region alone. It will also have an increasing impact on us, the inhabitants of prosperous Europe.    

If we look at bare numbers, the situation in Tanzania is not bad. Tanzania’s water resources are almost 1,700 m3 per person annually, surpassing the so-called water stress threshold. In Poland, it is only around 1,400 m3 per person. As Tanzania is situated in the equatorial zone, it has frequent and heavy tropical rains and Africa’s three largest lakes: Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi, as well as many large rivers that flow into the Indian Ocean.

However, vast resources of water and the possibility to use it do not go hand in hand, especially for Tanzania’s poorest inhabitants. Access to water is an increasing challenge due to the country’s low development, growing population and its pressure on natural resources, as well as climate change. The so-called Indian Ocean Dipole phenomenon caused by global warming makes rains in Tanzania heavier, but at the same time more and more irregular. It means a disaster for farmers, who for generations have tilled the soil according to the rhythm of the changing seasons, which are now disappearing. Unpredictable, heavy rains are as damaging to traditional crops as the more and more frequently irregular periods of drought. They also bring quite unexpected dangers. As a consequence of the irregular monsoon rains that occurred unexpectedly in Omar and Yemen this season, a locust plague has been tormenting farmers in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya over recent years. Following intense rains, the so far rather harmless locust began to reproduce fast, spreading with the wind across the Horn of Africa.

Another negative phenomenon also plays a role here: a sudden speed-up in water circulation in the local environment, caused primarily by deforestation. Wood is used to build houses and pens, and substitutes the nonexistent gas or electricity networks as a basic cooking fuel in millions of Tanzanian households. Every year, Tanzania loses 400,000 hectares of forests, which corresponds to the whole Warsaw metropolitan area. In places with no forests to absorb water, downpours cause floods which flush away soil, and then – under strong sun – water evaporates quickly, flows off, and just a few days later another drought comes. When it is very dry, people living outside cities are often forced to go very long distances to the nearest river or lake to fetch water for their families and households. Almost half of Tanzania’s population have limited access to water, which means that one household member has to spend a couple or even several hours a week to arrange drinking, cooking and washing water. It is mostly a task for women and children, which takes away their time for studying, while the heavy canisters and buckets affect their physical development and health.        

For Tanzania’s urban population, collecting water poses another problem. With so many people living in tin-roofed tiny houses, water-related diseases spread easily. During each rainy season, numerous cholera hotbeds emerge in Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam. The disease is carried through water polluted by biological waste. Standing containers and water pools where mosquitos reproduce are a breeding ground for malaria, which plagues the city after the rains. Another problem is a growing amount of plastic rubbish blocking watercourses. In May 2018, one of Dar es Salaam’s districts was flooded by a heavy rainfall which killed 12 people. The flood was caused by plastic bags and bottles blocking canal outflows.

All these problems beg obvious questions: cannot Tanzanians and more broadly, all Africa, simply find a solution? And why would we bother, ourselves having to cope with the problem of increasingly limited water resources in Poland and Europe?

The main causes of Tanzania’s limited access to water involve poverty, which is also a consequence of its past colonial exploitation, and a low education level. We should note that the system of universal education in Europe has been developed for over a hundred years, twice as long as the whole history of statehood of most African states, including Tanzania. Other factors include less experienced and weaker administrative structures and a lack of modern water technologies. But it is not only Tanzania or Africa that has to face up to this challenge. For us, it is looming close, too. Apart from ethical issues and the imperative of international solidarity with people who are weaker or poorer than us, we also need to take into account that water shortage and limited cultivation are the key causes explaining why Africans, mostly young people, migrate from rural areas to cities. Forced to leave places where their families have lived for generations, young people move to cities, hoping to find a job there. But there are not enough urban jobs for everyone. Take Dar es Salaam as an example: only approximately 40% of its working-age inhabitants are formally employed – for many young people the only hope is to carry on their journey. In the Internet era, pictures and films of rich European countries on Facebook or Instagram seem to offer these young people opportunities worth risking a dangerous and humiliating journey across the African continent and the Mediterranean. So if we want to ease migratory pressure, we need to address its root causes in Africa in the first place, among them the lack of or limited access to water.

This reasoning underlies Poland’s assistance in Tanzania. Our development projects cover such measures as supporting the establishment of terrace farming in mountain areas. Terraces allow retaining water for longer time, cultivating more agricultural produce and diversifying it, as well as reducing soil erosion and loss. Polish Aid also finances plastic recycling in urban areas and its removal from rivers and canals that flow through Dar es Salaam. To achieve large-scale results, it is essential that Tanzania is able to use modern, efficient technologies in water and sewage management. With this in mind, Polish Aid, Polish entrepreneurs representing the ICT and engineering sectors, and our academic institutions developed a project to modernize the management of water resources in Dar es Salaam and the country’s capital, Dodoma.   

 

Krzysztof Buzalski, Polish Ambassador to Tanzania