Solutions for Nigeria
Rita R. Colwell1 and Michael Greene2
Nigeria, like many mostly rural developing countries, is not able to provide all its population with basic services such as safe potable piped water and affordable electric power. The economics of extending the electric grid and water distribution network into the countryside are daunting, and the people who lack electricity, safe water, and effective medicines are usually poor and clustered within extremely dense urban communities or live in highly dispersed rural communities with limited infrastructure. Two-thirds of Nigerians, around 100 million people, lack household electricity, and about as many do not have safe drinking water. Nigeria also has the world's largest burden of people suffering from infectious diseases, mostly malaria, without effective treatment.
1Rita R. Colwell is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. E-mail: rcolwell{at}umd.edu.
2Michael Greene is a scholar at the National Academies, Washington, DC. E-mail: mgreene{at}nas.edu.
