Nigeria

Nigeria has made modest progress in expanding access to water, sanitation, and hygiene to its rapidly growing population of 183 million people, the largest on the African continent. Forty-eight percent of the population has access to basic drinking water sources, and 33 percent have access to sanitation. While the percentage of the urban population with access to basic water has increased, data show a significant decline in the proportion of urban households with access to piped water to premises, which dropped from 32 percent in 1990 to three percent in 2015. At the same time, the urban population has grown from 30 percent in 1990 to 48 percent in 2015, and this trend is expected to continue in the coming decades. Access gaps persist because of a combination of factors, including rapid urbanization, coupled with a growing demand for services; inefficient and ineffective service delivery; institutional and governance constraints; gender inequality; and weather and water related risks.

USAID is strengthening the governance of and institutions for urban water and sanitation in targeted Nigerian States where access rates are low and management challenges persist. USAID will fund the WASH Coordination Project, a partnership with the Coca-Cola Foundation, and the Mission’s flagship WASH activity, Effective Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Services (subject to the availability of funds). Key portfolio themes include: 1) expanding private sector opportunities to increase competition in urban WASH service delivery, and thereby drive efficiency gains; and, 2) leveraging large infrastructure investments through complementary activities to develop laws, regulations, commercial viability, governance, and management capacity.

Several donors support the Nigerian water and sanitation sector and focus on urban water infrastructure, including the African Development Bank, the French Development Bank, and the World Bank. USAID leverages these investments through complementary programming that emphasizes strengthening the enabling environment to increase WASH investments from both the public and private sectors and allows infrastructure investments to endure.

Overall, these activities are estimated to provide more than 2.5 million Nigerians with sustainable access to basic water services, and help 80,000 Nigerians gain access to basic sanitation by 2022.