2026 is the African Union’s year of water and sanitation. Heads of State have also endorsed a new continental water policy for the decades ahead. RFLD’s policy brief, Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, welcomes both. It also warns that neither will deliver for women unless they are read together with Article 15 and with the African Commission’s Guidelines on the Right to Water.
The AU theme of the year
The African Union’s theme for 2026 is “Assuring Sustainable Water Availability and Safe Sanitation Systems to Achieve the Goals of Agenda 2063”. It was launched on 14 February 2026 at the 39th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly in Addis Ababa. The AU lists eight objectives for the year, including the endorsement of the Africa Water Vision 2063.
Gender has been visible in the year’s messaging. The global theme of World Water Day 2026, marked by the African Union Commission on 23 March, was “Water and Gender”, under the slogan “Where Water Flows, Equality Grows”. Two days earlier, the AU Commission Chairperson wrote that “millions of Africans, disproportionately women and girls in rural communities, still walk long distances each day to collect water instead of attending school”.
The Africa Water Vision 2063 and Policy
The African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) adopted the Africa Water Vision 2063 and Policy at its 14th Governing Council in Dakar on 29 September 2025. Heads of State endorsed and launched it at the AU summit on 15 February 2026.
The Vision’s goal is “A water-secure and resilient Africa with safe sanitation for all”. It notes that “only about half of Africa’s population has access to safe water”. The AU’s press release on its launch cites an annual investment gap of US$30 billion.
The Vision includes one explicit gender milestone. By 2033, it aims for “Gender-balanced sanitation governance protocols adopted by 40% of Member States.”
Lessons from the last vision
This is not Africa’s first water vision. The Africa Water Vision 2025, prepared in 2000 by African and UN institutions, set ambitious targets. It aimed to cut the share of people without safe water and without sanitation by 95% by 2025. It also called for the “mainstreaming of gender issues”.
The 2025 deadline has passed. In 2024, only 31.7% of people in sub-Saharan Africa used safely managed drinking water, according to the UN Statistical Yearbook. The lesson for 2063 is that targets and good intentions on gender are not enough without indicators and budgets to back them.
Why Article 15 matters to the Vision
Continental water policy is written in the language of investment and infrastructure. That language is necessary. But it does not, on its own, guarantee that new pipes and pumps reach the women who carry water today.
Article 15(a) of the Maputo Protocol adds a binding duty. States Parties must “provide women with access to clean drinking water”. The African Commission’s Guidelines on the Right to Water add detail: States must reduce “the disproportionate burden and amount of time women bear in water collection” and “guarantee safe access to water for women and girls at any time of the day”.
Read together, the Vision provides the plan and the money. Article 15 and the Guidelines provide the yardstick for whether that plan serves women.
What RFLD asks of the AU and AMCOW
The brief sets out concrete requests, which RFLD will follow through its advocacy calendar:
- add sex-disaggregated indicators to the Vision’s monitoring framework, including time spent collecting water and women’s share of decision-making posts;
- bring forward the 2033 milestone on gender-balanced sanitation governance and extend it to water governance;
- use the closing of the 2026 theme of the year to adopt a continental commitment on women’s rights to water and sanitation, building on Article 15;
- review progress at the AU summit in February 2027, when the 2026 theme and the follow-up of the Vision are on the agenda.
These steps cost little. They would make the AU’s year of water a year that women can feel in their daily lives. For the wider context of RFLD’s work on the Maputo Protocol, see our country briefs on lifting the reservations.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
