Download the PDF version of this policy brief. National
governments should develop strong rural drinking water quality
monitoring and surveillance programs to ensure that
uncontaminated water is available in rural Sub-Saharan African
communities. Governments and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) need to educate well users on proper transportation and
storage of water in order to ensure their efforts to provide
reliable sources of clean drinking water to rural areas are not
being jeopardized. Communities must be engaged in the planning,
installation and management of wells to foster a sense of local
ownership. The importance of providing clean, safe drinking
water and sanitation to rural inhabitants of developing
countries is widely recognized. The United Nations (UN) General
Assembly, for instance, declared 2008 the International Year of
Sanitation, and the World Bank has been increasing financial
assistance to developing countries in support of water supply
and sanitation improvements (Cho, Ogwang and Op