Population Pressure, Freshwater Availability, and Water Stress in East Africa: A Panel Data Analysis

Abstract In East Africa, fast population expansion, uneven distribution of freshwater, dependency on agriculture and increasing socioeconomic demand increase strain on limited water resources, making freshwater shortage an increasingly important issue. The study employed an unbalanced longitudinal panel of 311 country-year observations from the available annual data from 1990 to 2022 to investigate population pressure, freshwater availability and water stress in 12 East African nations. The analysis covered water stress, population, renewable freshwater per capita, total renewable freshwater resources, GDP per capita, total freshwater withdrawals and sectoral water-use patterns. Regional patterns were characterised using descriptive statistics, trends in time, inter-country comparisons, Falkenmark water scarcity classifications, study of sectoral withdrawals and spatial mapping. There was a large degree of variability across countries. The mean water stress was 34.43% with a median of 6.17% indicating a substantially right skewed distribution due to the very high values reported for Sudan. In most countries, the availability of renewable freshwater per capita dropped with time, with large declines in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Sudan had the highest level of water stress, while Somalia suffered consistently high stress and a drop in the availability of fresh water. In contrast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had a mix of high renewable freshwater resources and relatively low water stress. In most countries agriculture accounted for the majority of freshwater withdrawals, for more than 90% of withdrawals in Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. The relation between GDP per capita and water stress was significantly different amongst countries, demonstrating that economic development is not the only factor explaining regional variances in water pressure. To summarise, results show that water stress in East Africa is driven by the interaction of population pressure, renewable freshwater resources, intensity of extraction, sectoral water demand and socioeconomic factors. Hence, there is a need for country-specific policies for water management, higher efficiency of agricultural water use, population-sensitive planning, stronger monitoring and greater regional collaboration to improve long-term water security.