Millennium Development Goal (MDG) On Sanitation and Water: The Advocates and the Rural-Urban Differentials in Ghana through the Media

Abstract

Improving access to clean water and sanitation facilities is one target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Studies demonstrate that more urban than rural residents have access to these facilities. Also, there is a sense that sanitation target of MDG 7C is far from reach because of the slow progress on it. The goal of this study therefore was to determine the extent to which the media through the newspapers have covered issues on water and sanitation matters among rural and urban dwellers including closing the access gap among rural and urban residents. This research used the Daily Graphic newspaper in Ghana, as a case study. Topics on water and sanitation issues from September 2000 to December 2011 were collected. The Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) software was used to analyse the data. The findings have shown that politicians and other government officials were predominantly the sources followed by NGOs’ workers. Topics featuring sanitation and water were geared to rural than urban areas with water issues being the predominant focus, and less so for sanitation. The skewed frequency of newspaper stories in favour of rural sanitation suggests that more attention is needed on rural sanitation in order to make significant progress on the MDG 7C.