The Battle for water in Ethiopia

Ethiopia was once a lush and fertile country, but a changing climate and poor land management have changed all that.UN agencies, in conjunction with the government and other NGO partners, are working to improve the situation, especially as regards access to clean water and sanitation for the country’s nearly 4 million people.
In present day Ethiopia, there are only small pockets of arable land, and fewer than 1 in three 3 households have access to safe water, while only 18 per cent of households have access to sanitation facilities. Water quality is another major problem, as evidenced by frequent outbreaks of water related epidemics in both rural and urban areas. Low levels of water and sanitation coverage also have important social implications.Women and children spend several hours every day fetching water. The time spent fetching water could be used to care for children in the home, rest or employment in income generating activities.

For girls, the task of carrying water combined with lack of sanitary facilities in schools often stands in the way of their education and travelling long hours to remote sources exposes girls to increase rates of abduction and rape.

Now, however, the United Nations Childrens’ Fund, UNICEF, together with the European Union and the government of Ethiopia is engaged in a multi-million dollar effort to t bring water and sanitation to a million people – more than a quarter of Ethiopia’s population.

Patrick McCormick is a media officer with UNICEF: "I mean Ethiopia suffers from having either an excess of water or droughts, obviously not enough water - so, it's a long-term work to try and even out the distribution of water around the country.Well in Ethiopia as anywhere else, what we're doing is repairing wells, creating new ones and trying to ensure [access to drinking water and sanitation] in a country where the rainfall is very uneven".

The joint project has helped more than 130 thousand villagers over three years. Much, however, remains to be done to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the share of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015, to improve sustainability and to improve service quality. Listen to Chris Altieri's report: