Daughter of the Desert-Barakatu

Water should not be a privilege. It is a human right.

This is the story of Barakatu and how access to clean water is changing her life in the quiet corner of the Sahara.

Barakatu is 18 and lives with her parents in the village of Tanka in Niger. Due to the family’s socio-economic situation, Barakatu had to leave education after finishing her primary school.

She helps her mother with domestic chores and works on the family farm, but…she is also slowly building a life independent of it... giving her economic freedom unthinkable to her just a few months ago. In 2022, Muntada Aid, in partnership with HKCC, a London-based cycle club, constructed 35 solar-powered water stations in Niger and allocated one to her village.

Most women in Niger work in unpaid care, domestic work and on home farms as free labour.

Nearly 40% of the women in Niger working in organised and unorganised sectors work below the international poverty line.

Only 30% of the women are literate.

70% of the married women were married before age 18. 

Barakatu is defying many of these odds.   

Niger is a land-locked country in the Sahel region facing and only 56% of the population has access to a source of drinking water.  

Only 13% of the population has access to basic sanitation services.  

Only 22.7% of schools have access to drinking water and 26.7% access to sanitation facilities. 

One of Muntada Aid’s core values is providing dignity to the people we support. Keeping that in mind, we aim to provide clean water solutions to people within their communities and ease off their burden of daily searching for freshwater resources. 

In 2022, Muntada Aid constructed 264 similar water projects serving an estimated 102,000 people daily in eight countries.  

Since 2012, we have helped 1.8 million people with daily water needs.

Please support of Drop of Life campaign and help us build more water projects in Niger and the rest of Africa.

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