The first thing I noticed was not the thirst. It was the silence. In rural Ghana's Bono Region, women and children rise before dawn, carrying empty yellow "Kuffuor gallons" toward streams shared with wandering goats — brown after rain, muddy pools in the dry season. Yet this was the water families drank. When clean water finally flowed, one woman put it best: "This water has given us back our time. Now we can think about tomorrow instead of only today." A story of how water r

In 2023, two moments in and around Zinder, Niger, changed how I think about water security, both during the rainy season, when water appears everywhere. Along a highway, families filled containers from reddish-brown pools stained by the soil, water for drinking. Weeks later in the city, a woman offered me a cloudy glass harvested from her rooftop, because safe water was kilometres away. Water was present in both. Security was not. A simple lesson: availability is not the same

"Water no get enemy." When Fela Kuti sang it in 1975, he was repeating an old Yoruba truth: water is life's indispensable gift. No one in their right mind fights it. Yet every day, we do. Dumping refuse in gutters, paving over wetlands, pouring waste into streams, then acting surprised when floods enter our homes. From dying rivers in Ondo to man-made flooding in Lagos, this is the story of how we became water's friendly foes, and how the same hands that pollute can protect.

Every morning across Zambia, thousands of young people begin their day with water — walking miles before school, queuing at taps, arriving late because the household comes first. For years these stories were treated as ordinary. But ordinary does not mean acceptable. Kachusha Nkosha on how Zambian youth are moving from beneficiaries to designers of their own water future.