A survey of household domestic water-use patterns in rural semi-arid Nigeria

This paper presents the pattern of domestic water use in Katarko village in north-eastern Nigeria, to improve the understanding of how local communities in the Sahel relate to water. Contrary to popular belief that women are the primary water collectors in rural sub-Saharan Africa, we show that the gender of primary water collectors depends on the custom and culture of the local community. Our results reveal a trade-off between using good-quality water and the effort it takes to obtain it. This, with poor sanitation and unhygienic water handling practices, may explain the high incidence of diarrhoea in the village. The preferred method of water purification is cloth-filtration, followed by the addition of anthill soil, with boiling ranking third.