Daily life in Bongo revolves around agriculture and small-scale trading
Bongo Town, a small agrarian community at the heart of the Bongo District, has long struggled with water access. The town’s families, who largely depend on millet farming, have had to balance daily life around unreliable water supply.
Women in the community are known for their skills in shea processing and basket weaving, while local trading—especially of millet-based drinks like pito and zomkom—remains a key part of the local economy.
During a recent visit, 62-year-old Abana Salifu, a mother of four, shared her cautiously optimistic view. Sitting by her neatly arranged table near the Bongo market, where she sells handmade goods, she noted that access to water had seen some improvement in the past month.
Water in Bongo is supplied by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), which operates a piped system connected to a 150-cubic-metre storage tank. This system serves approximately 318 households and provides water through 18 standpipes for residents without home connections. The town’s population currently stands at 8,351.
Until recently, Bongo’s water supply was highly unreliable. The system relied on a single functional borehole, which often took up to three days to fill just 40% of the storage tank. Many residents reported waiting weeks for water, if it arrived at all. In some cases, water only came at night or during working hours, making it difficult for households to access.
The water scarcity forced many residents to turn to alternative boreholes, which were often contaminated with unsafe fluoride levels. Others resorted to buying from private vendors at high costs, paying as much as GHS 15 for 250 litres—far more expensive than the CWSA’s rate of GHS 12 per 1,000 litres.
The situation was further complicated by widespread fluoride contamination in underground water sources. Boreholes previously deemed safe have shown increasing fluoride concentrations over time.
In 2024, tests revealed that even boreholes constructed by WaterAid within the last five years now exceed safe fluoride limits, with some already capped. Though the water may look clear, excessive fluoride exposure has left many children with brown-stained teeth and is linked to joint pain among adults.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Water Company’s Vea Dam system, which runs pipelines through the Bongo District, does not supply Bongo Town directly. Integrating the Vea Dam network into the CWSA system has been ruled out over concerns about pricing and the technical risks of compromising CWSA’s ability to manage distribution volumes.
Despite these long-standing challenges, progress is now being made. With support from WaterAid and the Zochonis Charitable Trust, two existing boreholes—located outside high-fluoride zones and previously fitted with hand pumps—have been mechanised and connected to the piped system.
Together, they yield 10.8 cubic metres of water per hour. The result is a noticeable improvement in water delivery, with some households now receiving water every other day—a welcome change after years of scarcity.
Yet, concerns persist. Community leaders and water managers worry about how long the new boreholes will remain fluoride-free, given the rising underground fluoride levels across the region. Bulk fluoride treatment remains prohibitively expensive, and household-level solutions are either limited or unreliable.
The Traditional Council of Bongo, the CWSA, the Bongo District Assembly, and development partners are now jointly appealing for urgent government support. They are calling for investment in detailed technical and financial feasibility studies that will pave the way for a long-term, sustainable solution to guarantee safe, fluoride-free water—not only for Bongo Town but for the entire district.
Climate change is adding further pressure. Rising temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns in northern Ghana are reducing groundwater recharge while increasing demand for water, compounding an already fragile system.
For now, residents like Abana Salifu remain cautiously hopeful. But lasting change, they know, will require coordinated action, sustained investment, and innovative approaches that ensure both water quantity and quality—because in Bongo, clean water should not come at the cost of health.
