Water services versus mobile phones in Africa - CHART

• From: Vol 9, Issue 5 (May 2008)
• Category: Analysis
• Region: Africa
• Country:

This month’s chart compares the proportion of the population with access to piped water connections against the proportion with access to mobile phones in selected African countries.

Cellphone networks have established better penetration rates in two decades than water utilities have in a century. It undermines many of the assumptions about affordability which have underpinned the financing model of the water sector on the continent, but it also raises some interesting questions of consumer choice. If people could go into a shop and buy a water connection ...