Talk:Water scarcity in Africa

I would like to expand on this article addressing clean water scarcity in Africa to examine more in depth how it effects the health of Africans, opportunities for women, education, development, regional conflict, and finally what efforts have been made to alleviate this issue. I have three main reasons for revising the current article:

1. As it is, the article presents very basic facts and must be expanded because Africa is one of the more important examples of how water scarcity leads to the stalling and reversal of development.

2. The current article discusses various subtopics' affect on the economy, but I believe they should be discussed in terms of development rather than just the economy. This change to broader terminology indicates a focus on how health, opportunities for women, and education of children in water-scarce Africa effects the development of the continent in terms of how this impacts their capability to survive, grow the economy, obtain access to gainful employment and opportunities, and live with basic human dignity.

3. The current article fails to discuss the effect of clean water availability on education, regional conflict, and what is being done to fix this issue. These three related aspects are integral in understanding how a lack of clean water stifles the continent's development.

I would appreciate any feedback on what you think should or shouldn't be included in my revision. Hmccann (talk) 01:43, 8 March 2012 (UTC)Hmccann

Your plan sounds like a great one, and I'm excited you're looking at revising this. Wikipedia is notoriously bad at expanding articles like this one that require synthesis and a general approach instead of, say, the dates and events of an individual life. I think the idea of including the link between water supplies and regional conflict is a particularly good one; for example, I know that I've seen several authors connect the Darfur conflict with the drying of Lake Chad, such as here [1]. The only additional suggestion I'd offer is that it would be useful to have at least one section that breaks down the issue region by region instead of taking the continent as a monolith. Some generalizations can obviously be made, but I wouldn't be surprised if water scarcity takes different forms in Mali than it does in Malawi; perhaps it would be possible to find relevant data indicating the degrees and ways in which each region suffers from the problem.

It looks like this is your first Wikipedia article, so don't hesitate to drop me a line if you have any questions I can help out with. A higher-quality version of this could be a huge asset to students and aid workers looking for quick facts, so I'll be glad to pitch in however I can. Khazar2 (talk) 08:42, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Review and Suggestions

This article is really great! I really think you succeeded in your attempt at showing how development works within the topic of water scarcity in Africa. I agree with the previous comment that these changes have made this a great asset for students and aid workers.

There are a few suggestions that I can make:

There was one time that there was information that wasn’t cited and I was curious to read more. In “Health,” you state, “With a complete lack of water, humans can on average only live up to 3 days.” I thought this was a very interesting fact, which made me wonder more about the source of the fact so I could read up on the health effects from water deprivation but there was none.

I really thought it was interesting when you mentioned climate change a few times in your post; if you wanted to add more information to your article, I think that climate change, and how it manifests itself in water scarcity in Africa, could be a great topic to expand upon.

I also thought that it could be beneficial to add information about possible technologies that could help in solving these problems. You say that “the technologies and ability to tackle the issue of water scarcity and cleanliness are present,” which made me curious about these technologies.

Great job! Juliabarrow3 (talk) 4:29, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I will definitely get a link up there on the effects of water deprivation and do some more research on how climate change is affecting water scarcity in Africa specifically. Also I really like your idea about discussing possible technologies to aid the water crisis in Africa. I'll see if I can add a section near the end about that. Thanks for your recommendations, I will definitely see what i can do about them! Hmccann (talk) 02:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

More Review and Suggestions

First of all, great job! I really like how you took an article like this one and expanded more on it, especially since it does require more searching as far as sources and things like that. So there were a few grammatical errors, but it was minor, just like missing letters here and there, so I just fixed those little things. Other than that, if I were you, I would rename the section “Issues by Region” to something else. Unless I just read it wrong, I assumed that you were going to break the problem down literally by specific regions, but instead you talked about two different types of scarcity. It’s just a bit misleading with that title, so I would change it to better suit the bigger purpose stressed in this section. Also, I agree with Juliabarrow3 that you should break it down by different regions within Africa. It gives the article even more depth and credibility. Overall, like I said earlier, I really enjoyed this article! It was very interesting, and I love how you tied this issue of water scarcity to other aspects within Africa. Natashacruz12 (talk) 22:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that I could probably add a more clear title for that section, I will change it to something more indicative of what I am referring to. Also, I like your suggestion of looking at specific regions and how water scarcity affect them. I was more concentrated on getting a broad look of how the issue affects Africa when editing the article, but I will see if I can find a few specific and defining differences between certain regions to add a section on. Thanks so much for your help and thoughts!Hmccann (talk) 02:26, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggested Edits

I enjoyed reading your article. I felt that this topic was original- you didn't just present a commonly discussed issue. The only suggestion that I have is regarding your generalization of the continent. I feel that due to the great diversity of the African continent, you could give your reader a better sense of the issue by distinguishing scarcity issues across regions in Africa instead of discussing Africa as a whole. This will more acknowledge the fact that Africa is made up of different countries with their own identities and issues. Are all of the areas such as North or Sub-Saharan dealing with water scarcity in the same magnitude? If not, you could analyze why some regions are doing better than others. When you discuss efforts towards alleviating water scarcity, you could also discuss the impact that NGOs are having. Job well done! B4change1 (talk) 02:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)b4change1

I like your suggestions, I agree that it would definitely improve the scope of this article if I add more information regarding specific regions of Africa. I will also look more into the impact that NGOs are having on water scarcity in Africa. Thanks for your comments! Hmccann (talk) 15:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggested Article Expansion

As part of a class assignment through Rice University's Poverty, Justice and Human Capabilities program, I would like to continue to expand on this article addressing clean water scarcity in Africa because as is, the article presents a very broad review on how clean water scarcity, women, children, education, and development are all interconnected in the context of Africa, but would benefit from more specific and expanded information, as well as the addition of new topic points relating to who it effects, why, and how. I have five main areas that I would like to expand upon:

1. More information is needed in the section titled "Women, Children, and Education" and potentially could be broken down into two separate parts - Women and Children - despite their related aspects, with an overarching theme of Education.

2. The section titled "Productivity and Development" would profit from a more in-depth discussion of various theories on how clean water scarcity in Africa impedes its development. I would also like to add more on how this affect the productivity of African women, specifically.

3. Under the section titled "Reasons for Scarcity", I would like to potentially add sub-sections on over-consumption, environmental degradation, population, politics and privatization's effect on water scarcity.

4. In response to comments calling for more specificity by region in this article, I would like to add a section on specific case studies on regions in Africa experiencing clean water scarcity. This would better illustrait the issue's broach-reaching impact, as well as show differences in severity throughout such a diverse continent.

5. In the section addressing what efforts are being made to alleviate this crisis, I would like to add updates to reflect any improvements in technology/efforts that have been made in the past year, as well as those possibly overlooked in the initial research for this page.

As always, any feedback on what you think should or shouldn't be included in my revision would be greatly appreciated. Hmccann (talk) 21:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Contribution Feedback

You do a great job of tackling a really big/broad topic! In order to increase the neutrality of the article, I suggest you explicitly state where you’re getting your information. For example, under the Education Women, and Children section, you state that the social structures create a situation in which women have less access to water when compared to men. Where do you get the statistics? I think telling the readers would increase both neutrality and legitimacy of the information. This suggestion can also be applied to the other sections of the article you edited. My second suggestion has to do with content. In the Talk page of the article, you mention adding sections about specific case studies in Africa that experience water scarcity. However, I did not read any case studies in your contribution (regional differences is pretty broad). I think adding one or two specific villages and/or countries experiencing this problem would make your contribution even stronger. Good luck with the rest of your assignment!

Great suggestions! I will go through and make sure to state more often where I'm getting my information from, rather than just relying on links to my references. I agree that this will add much more credibility to many of the facts mentioned in the article. Additionally, I agree that case studies would make this article much stronger - at this point much of my revisions have been limited to improving the quality of the sections already present, and upgrading some of the more general information. I do still want to add more specific case studies and go beyond the regional information that I introduced, though, and will continue to work on that. Thank you for your suggestions, I appreciate the time you took to review my article! Hmccann (talk) 18:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Morell21 (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review Feedback

Here are some specific comments/edits I have: I'm unsure if the sentence "In Africa, the struggle for access to clean drinking water is indicative of how water scarcity leads to the stalling and reversal of human progress" is neutral in accordance with Wikipedia standards.. Double check? Also, the sentence after it talks about the difference in water usage between Africa and the U.S. I guess since you want to make a comparison, perhaps talk about the reason behind the difference - it's not that Africans just use less water, but because they have much lower access to clean water.

In the Health subsection, "inexperienced immune systems" sounds awkward, is that the legitimate term, or is it possible to change it?

The sentence about correlation between decrease in access to clean water and decrease education is awesome.

"The detriment water scarcity has on educational attainment for women in turn affects the social and economic capital of women in terms of leadership, earnings, and working opportunities,[9] and as a result of this," you should probably end the sentence after work opportunities and start the new sentence with "As a result of this..."

On the topic of conflict related to water, why is it that the report predicts that after 2022 countries and terrorists are more likely to use water for political reasons and conflict? It seems that the tactics are not unheard of, so why are these tactics more likely to be adopted after 2022?

"The majority of Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from economic scarcity that exists because of population’s lack of" this also sounds awkward, maybe take out 'that exists' and either add 'the' before population or just say because of African countries' or something.

"Some suggested and ongoing efforts to achieve this include digging wells, rainwater harvesting, and building clean-water catchment and storage tanks." What? The some suggested part threw me off.

Here is my general review feedback: I like that the article's sections stay on target and at the end of sections they are related back to water scarcity and why it's detrimental. The images are relevant and very effective in showing us what the condition is like in different African countries and all over the world. I usually prefer the order of presenting the problem (overview), the causes, the impacts, and then the solutions, but I think this organization format is fine too. The citations look fine as well. Maybe add some external links to water scarcity/problems on other continents? Are there any specific major initiatives/campaigns outside of the UN that promotes clean water that are notable? That would be nice to see how NGOs are marketing the issue and solving it.

Kayceeho (talk) 04:10, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough and specific comments, they are very helpful. I will revise the sections mentioned to improve the flow of the article and fix grammatical errors. I agree that there should be more specificity in the conflict section on how water scarcity will become an increasing source of conflict by 2022 and will make sure to connect more of the dots. Also, I went ahead and added three links to other pages, as per your suggestion, on articles that show how water scarcity affects other regions, it's more general context, and the Millennium Development Goals. Finally, I think your suggestion to talk a little more about NGO work beyond just UN efforts is a great. I recently found another source listing many more initiatives to promote clean/safe water in Africa and will add them to the article.

Excellent suggestions and I appreciate the time you took to make them! Hmccann (talk) 18:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)