Accra — A threat of water shortage is looming over West Africa with experts predicting that its full gravity will be experienced in 10 countries by 2020. The countries are Benin, Chad, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Niger and Togo.

According to Professor Lekan Oyebande, Chairman of the Technical Committee of Global Water Partnership West Africa, increasing demand for water from rapidly growing populations, pollution of water bodies from urban waste particularly from communities located near river banks and reservoirs in these countries are some of principal inducing factors responsible for the imminent shortage.

He observed that rapid population rise in West Africa, worsening of environmental degradation and pollutions and threat of finite resource require the setting up of an integrated water management that takes into account all the resource uses, and involves all the relevant stakeholders.

Professor Oyebande made these disclosures at a West African Regional Training Workshop on water for Anglophone journalists in Accra. The three-day workshop sought to equip journalists with the skills to accurately report on water management issues within the sub-region.

He said the world and Africa in particular face the catastrophic consequences of Climate Change; water resources management raises diverse and complex questions which include how to respond to people's basic needs.

Sharing the same water basins has created a high degree of interdependence among West African states and this forms the basis of Professor Lekan's belief that the next world war may not be caused by oil and gas but water

The workshop which was organized by the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), a sub component of the ECOWAS Water Resource Coordinating Unit based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It brought together journalists from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and The Gambia.

The Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Central University, Professor C. Dorm - Adzobu, maintained that water resource policies in West Africa was formulalted after elaborated consultations under aegis of the ECOWAS Commission in close collaboration with the West African Economic and Monitoring Union and the Interstate permanent community on draught control in the Sahel (CISS). The document, he said, was approved by the Council of Ministers in Charge of Water and adopted by ECOWAS Authority of Heads of States on 19th December, 2008 in Abuja.

The Director of Water Resources at the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Minta Abogye, urged journalists to endeavour to report the facts about water issues and avoid sensationalism.

To him, 'water is life' hence the need to efficiently manage and preserve the little available to us.

He disclosed that the daily demand for water in Accra alone is 140 million gallons and that water has been classified as an economic asset.