Water is central to all aspects of life, wherever in the world you are.
Some people enjoy plenty of it and others struggle to access it for daily necessities. The availability of and access to water are important for human development.
Studies have shown that the average person uses 150 liters of water a day for drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning and other daily activities.
At the same time, some people in the world use an average of only 17 litres daily.
According to Rose Anderson, editor at MicroEmpowering.org, "Providing access to safe water is a priority for all nations because water is a limited resource essential to human health and economic activity.
"For many people in Africa, there is little or no access to safe drinking water.
"Water scarcity in Africa is expected to increase in the near future due to economic growth and increasing populations."
She says that 45% of the population of southern Africa is predicted to be in a state of "water stress" or "water scarcity" by 2025.
Factors such as limited access to financial resources and technology also increase the difficulty of providing enough water to the people of Africa.
"Southern Africa is an especially interesting example of water usage across international borders because the water resources of this area are shared between nations with great social, political and economic differences. This makes agreeing on the amount of water that each country is entitled to very difficult," says Anderson.
In her blog,"Water Scarcity in Southern Africa", she further states that "a theoretical foundation is important for enhancing communication between the NGOs, foreign governments and international lending institutions that are involved in the discussion and implementation of water issues in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
"The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development is a basic set of four assumptions about water issues that can be used as a foundation for further discussion.
"It is especially important to management in water-scarce and impoverished nations, where it suggests the creation of an otherwise unavailable platform for the public to express their needs."
A number of reports indicate that more than five million people in southern African may require humanitarian assistance during the 2012/13 period.
Across SADC, over 200-million people are also at risk of water shortages and South Africa is no exception.
In the past few years the ravages of climate change have brought uncertainty in rainfall patterns and, because of over-reliance on rain-fed agriculture, has resulted in a decline in yields and an increase in the number of households requiring food aid.
Water scarcity is, therefore, a growing concern with population growth and associated demands for domestic, agricultural and industrial increasing stress on limited water resources.
Water availability in southern Africa is variable across both time and space: some parts of the region experience scarcity and other parts abundance.
Water scarcity has multiple dimensions.
Physical scarcity occurs when there is limited water to meet demand; its symptoms include severe environmental degradation, declining groundwater and unequal water distribution.
Economic water scarcity occurs when there is a lack of investment, particularly infrastructure, to meet the demand of the downtrodden to use existing water sources.
Large parts of Africa suffer from economic water scarcity. There is currently an enormous strain on water resources to meet basic human needs, which poses a challenge to municipalities.
Contents and photographs for this page were supplied and signed off by Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality