Who carries the water home? RFLD’s policy brief, Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, answers this question with the best data available. The pattern is consistent across sources and across countries: the work falls on women and girls.
The global picture
In 2023, the WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) published a report with a special focus on gender. It found that 1.8 billion people lived in households without water on the premises. In 7 out of 10 of these households, women and girls aged 15 and over were primarily responsible for water collection.
The gap starts in childhood. Girls under 15 fetch water more often than boys of the same age, at 7% against 4%. By adulthood the gap has widened into a clear division of labour. Fetching water becomes a woman’s daily task, often for life, and the time it takes is rarely counted as work.
Sub-Saharan Africa carries the heaviest load
The JMP gender report shows that this is above all an African issue. Nearly half (45%) of the 1.2 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa rely on water that must be collected. Women in the region are four times as likely as men to fetch it.
The report also looked at countries where at least a quarter of households relied on women to collect water. There are 21 such countries in the world. All 21 are in sub-Saharan Africa.
In seven countries, more than half of all households relied on women to fetch water:
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Ethiopia
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Togo
Chad and Togo both sit within RFLD’s network in West and Central Africa. Chad has not ratified the Maputo Protocol, which means its women cannot yet invoke Article 15 against their government.
What country studies add
A study published in PLOS ONE in 2016 by Graham and colleagues looked at water collection in 24 sub-Saharan African countries. Adult women were the main collectors in all 24. Their share ranged from 46% in Liberia to 90% in Côte d’Ivoire.
The same study found that girls made up 62% of the children who collect water, and boys 38%. Children who fetch water lose time that could go to school or play. Girls lose more of it. The study also found that Nigeria and Ethiopia each had more than 1 million households where water collection took over 30 minutes.
National surveys in RFLD’s countries point the same way. In Nigeria, the 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, as cited by UNICEF Nigeria, found that 40% of women and girls aged 15 and over are the main collectors of drinking water, against 30% of men and boys of the same age. In Senegal, a 2018 World Bank appraisal states that “88 percent of adult women in the Groundnut Basin collect water”.
The problem with household data
Most water statistics are collected at household level. A survey asks whether the household has water on site and who usually fetches it. This tells us a lot about access. It tells us much less about the burden on each person.
RFLD’s brief identifies this as one part of the implementation gap: household-level statistics hide individual burdens. A woman who walks for water twice a day and a man who never does live in the same “household with access”. The averages blur the difference.
There is a wider gap too. UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2025 notes that SDG 6, the global goal on water and sanitation, has “no gender-specific indicators” in the official framework. Progress can be reported without saying anything about women.
What RFLD recommends
The brief asks for better measurement as a first step. States should report on Article 15 in every periodic report to the African Commission, with sex-disaggregated data on access and on time spent collecting water. They should also include data on safety.
Development partners and funders are asked to support national statistical offices to measure water collection by individual, and to measure violence at water points. These are modest technical changes. They would allow governments to see who carries the burden and to target their investment.
For women’s organisations, the data in the brief is a starting point for advocacy. It can be used in shadow reports, in meetings with ministries, in budget hearings and in questions put by members of parliament. RFLD’s manual on shadow reports explains how to bring such evidence before the African Commission.
The numbers are stark, and they are consistent. Water collection in Africa is women’s work. Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol obliges States to change that by providing women with access to clean drinking water.
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.
