Across Africa, water and sanitation governance has undergone significant policy evolution through continental frameworks such as Agenda 2063 and the most recent Africa Water Vision launched in February 2026. Despite these landmark normative advances spanning over two decades, access to clean water and sanitation across the continent remains deeply engendered, with women and marginalised communities bearing disproportionate burdens. This article argues that the prevailing water and sanitation governance models in Africa, which are majorly infrastructure-driven and technocratic are inadequate to address the systemic inequalities inherent in the Africa water and sanitation architecture. Drawing on related rights-based and feminist theories, the article reconceptualises Africa water and sanitation crisis as a matter of rights rather than service delivery and postulates the notion of reparative and transformative water and sanitation governance. Using comparative insights, it demonstrates that gendered exclusion, power asymmetries, weak accountability mechanisms and market-driven dynamics reproduce inequality in water and sanitation access. It concludes that attaining maximum and equitable water and sanitation access in Africa requires a gender-centric governance shift and institutional and regulatory frameworks that regulate corporate actors and redistribute power.
Keywords: africa: human rights, reparative justice, transformative water sanitation governance
