Ethiopia Projects

Girls pump water from underground tank, Yabello, Boreno zone, Ethiopia. Source: ERHA

Ethiopia Rainwater Association (ERHA) facilitates the promotion of appropriate and innovative rainwater harvesting (RWH) technologies in Ethiopia through demonstration, advocacy, networking, and research.  Currently, ERHA is focusing on the promotion, dissemination, and implementation of RWH initiatives in partnership with its major resource partners.

Our Current Projects

Up-scaling of Sand Dams in Eastern and Southern Ethiopia (funding partner: WaterAid Ethiopia)

The rural communities residing in the eastern and southern parts of Ethiopia such as the Jijiga and Borana zone of the Somali and Oromiya regional states respectively have no sufficient access to clean drinking water. People are largely dependent on open water sources of unreliable quality due to contamination from human or animal excrement. Such water sources experience high evaporation rates, frequently drying up near the start of the dry period. Adequate purifying mechanisms are usually absent and too costly to purchase. During the last decade, numerous wells and boreholes have installed to improve peoples’ access to drinking water. However, in large areas of these zones, groundwater levels have dropped due to over-exploitation resulting in boreholes and wells running dry. During dry periods, people have to travel long distances to fetch water from sources that are more permanent. The implementation of sand dams will provide a permanent and realistic solution for water shortages in semi-arid areas, through rainwater/flood collection within seasonally dry watersheds. In this way, communities will be ensured of a safe water source during dry periods, while additionally benefiting from opportunities such as higher agricultural productivity, sanitation, and income-generation because of water availability and ground water recharge. This approach will positively impact the natural environment by reducing erosion and flooding, while supporting the natural vegetation and soil regeneration. In general, the anticipated project will facilitate greater availability of water, a high quality (reliable) drinking water, and better resilience (adaptation) to climate change.

Basin Development Challenges of the (CPWF) Challenges Programme on Water and Food (project holder: International Livestock Research Institute [ILRI])

This project is about matching technologies with environments, and aiming to identify the conditions – biophysical and institutional – that favour the use of particular sets of practices, then scanning the landscape to find out where else these conditions prevail.  If the development challenge is successfully met, innovative RWH systems will have been developed and implemented at landscape scale across agro-ecosystems in the Ethiopian highlands. These will address the exploitation of rainwater across landscapes, and appropriate RWH technologies will be deployed, maintained, and monitored. These technologies will have been identified, and matched to local rainfall conditions, soil types, and topography. At research sites, associated small-scale irrigation techniques that allow farmers to draw on their rainwater to irrigate crops during the dry season will have been identified and implemented.

Enhancing Impacts of Urban Rainwater Harvesting for Water Demand Management in Major Urban Centers of Ethiopia (UN-HABITAT)

The overall goal of the project is to contribute towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations and the Universal Access Plan (UAP) of the Ethiopian Government. The purpose of the project is to cause a widespread understanding of the menacing water shortage and alternative solutions through providing useful information and practical demonstrations to policy makers, water managers, planners and practitioners as well as the wider public. In this regard, the main focus of the project is to support UN-HABITAT’s Water Demand Management (WDM) initiative through its Water for African Cities (WAC-II) Programme with the objective of reducing the urban water crisis through efficient and effective demand management. The major objective of the extended project is: ‘enhancing impacts of urban RWH promotion for WDM in major urban centers of Ethiopia through up-scaling the experiences of the pilot project towards facilitating widespread adoption and effective utilisation of the RWH  alternative to address optimal needs of vulnerable communities experiencing severe water shortages for domestic water supply and sanitation.’  Thus, the project is supposed to facilitate further promotion of RWH as an effective WDM strategy in the three target cities as well as other urban areas that might be identified in the course of project implementation. It was also meant to facilitate both consolidations of on-going efforts initiated during the pilot phase and furthering implementation of diverse and mutually reinforcing activities. This is to ensure pervasive public awareness, enhanced knowledge and skill of all stakeholders in RWH in the targeted urban centres through building on technical capacity of all stakeholders, advocacy, and networking.

Our Previous Projects

• ‘Water Harvesting to Improve Livelihoods in Southern Ethiopia’  (Swiss Re)
• ‘Rural Rainwater Harvesting Scaling-up Project’ (MFS/RAIN Foundation)
• ‘Rainwater Harvesting Project for Improved Hygiene and Sanitation at Rural Schools of Gambella Regional State’ (UNICEF)