| dc.description.abstract | Low water security is widely recognized by policymakers and academics as a global risk and
policy challenge especially in rapidly urbanizing cities. Kinshasa, the capital and largest city of
the Democratic Republic of Congo, faces significant, yet paradoxical challenges to achieve
urban water security. This study evaluates the present and future urban water security in
Kinshasa, across seven key dimensions: availability, accessibility, health, and sanitation,
affordability, environment, water-related disaster and governance. The mini-max approach is
used to normalize indicators to a scale of 1 to 5, and the weighted sum approach to calculate
both dimensional and overall, the urban water index from 2015 to 2024. Furthermore, a
scenario-based approach was applied to evaluate the future water state of Kinshasa considering
the business-as-usual scenario and an improvement scenario up to 2040. Results revealed that
the overall urban water security from 2015 to 2024 remained fair security with an overall index
fluctuating between 1.69 and 2.09. In the seven dimensions of urban water security, water related disasters exhibited a good security range fluctuating between 4 to 4.4, followed by the
affordability dimension which showed improvement rising from 1.87 in 2019 to 3.94 in 2020,
and slightly increasing to 3.97 in 2024 falling in the range of good security. In contrast, all
remaining dimensions revealed weakness and fell in fair security in 2024 except the governance
dimension which presented poor security with a security index of 1 from 2015 to 2024. Looking
into the future, under the business-as-usual scenario, estimations revealed a gradual increase of
2.05 within the fair security range in 2030, reaching satisfactory security with a 3.38 range in
2040. However, under an improvement scenario considering targeted improvements are made
in weak dimensions, Kinshasa could achieve a satisfactory water security level by 2030 (3.38)
and a good level (3.95) by 2040. This study provides both a retrospective and prospective
evaluation of water security in Kinshasa, highlighting the necessity for policymakers to take
immediate, informed, and targeted actions. | en_US |
