African environmental issues are caused by anthropogenic effects on the African natural environment and have major impacts on humans and nearly all forms of endemic life. Issues include desertification, problems with access to safe water supply, population explosion and fauna depletion.
More than 70 per cent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa (340 million people) have no access to basic sanitation services. Among these, 98 million people (19 per cent) practice open defecation, 179 million use unimproved facilities and 63 million shared sanitation facilities.
To a large extent, the challenges to sanitation in Ghana and many other developing nations are linked to the inability to create proper disposal points for solid waste, lack of enforcement of sanitation laws, population growth, poor financing of sanitation policies, rural-urban migration, poor sanitation infrastructure, lack of sanitation technologies among others. Addressing these related factors requires a systems approach, and it needs to be done in a concerted manner.
