Remote Ethiopian Community Ensures Sustainable Water Supply
UNCDF strengthens capacity building for planning, budgeting and maintenance, provides grant funds to subsidize construction
Only 30 per cent of the population in North Gondar, Ethiopia has access to reasonably safe domestic water supplies. All photos by Adam Rogers / UNCDF.
Members of the Kokit Kebele (sub-district), near the border with Sudan, meet to discuss a community water project.
The old system of water collection in Kokit, where villagers would have to siphon water out of a large tank, that was filled with water pumped out of the ground by a diesel engine.
Mr. Gibtsu Sisay, Chairman of the Kokit Development Committee, standing next to a new system put in place to supply water to 6 different points throughout the sub-district of Kokit.
Mr. Yohannes Mulu, Chief Accountant with the Metema District Council, discusses accounting and budgeting issues with Mr. Afework Fekadu, deputy coordinator of the Warenda Development Fund. Support for budgeting and accounting is a central feature of UNCDF's support to local development in Ethiopia.
KOKIT, METEMA: Gibtsu Sisay is the chairman of the Kokit Kebele Administration Committee. Kokit sits on the Ethiopian side of the border with Sudan, in the northern district of Metema. The region is extremely dry, poor and sparsely populated.
There are nine members on the Committee, whose purpose is to concern itself with the well-being of the community, to collect funds for development, and to plan and implement the delivery of important infrastructure and services. The committee is chosen by the Kokit Council, a larger body of 200 people that is elected by the community.
"Though we have a lot of problems, Kokit works together to solve its problems," said Sisay during a recent meeting at his village. "Each person contributes what he or she can - be it labour or a few coins - and together, with support from the Regional Government and friends from abroad, we are able to make some progress."
As with in most arid regions around the world, water is considered the foremost priority - more important than even sanitation, education or road infrastructure. The second and third priorities as ranked by the community are health centres and schools. "But without water, we could not survive," Sisay said.
The most recent project the Committee initiated took on a grand scale, far greater than the members had originally anticipated. Hitherto, the only water source for the 9,000 people in the area was a single well located three kilometers from town. A diesel engine pumped the water from an aquifer and siphoned it into a 1,000 litre tank. Villagers carrying jerry cans on their head, or with larger tanks on carts hauled by mules, would descend upon the tank whenever water was available. Filling their tanks with the precious liquid, they would haul it back to town.
With a small grant from the United Nations Capital Development Fund, reinforced by capacity building in planning, budgeting, monitoring and project execution, the Committee set about planning a water distribution system with six access points in population centres. "A little bit of support can go a long way in a place like Kokit," said Yohannes Fitalo, Chief Accountant and Finance Officer with the Metema District Council. "They have tremendous initiative to want to make their lives better, all they needed was a bit of help from the outside."
Fitalo said the Committee mobilized 8,037 people from the community (4,315 men and 3,722 women) to dig 15 kilometers of trenches, help lay the water pipes and then cover them up. A larger tank with a 10,000 litre capacity replaced the old one. They also collected (and saved from water fees from the previous system) 60,000 birr (about US$17,000) to cover the cost of the project that was needed in addition to the block grants from UNCDF and the regional government. "Even the poorest people in our community were making voluntary contributions because they know how important it is to have water," said Fitalo.
To maintain the security and operation of the water system, a guard will be placed at each of the six water points. His job is to monitor the water use and collect nominal fees. The money will be managed by the development committee and used to ensure continued maintenance.
The Kokit example is but one of thousands across Africa where UNCDF is strengthening local government capacity to provide basic social and economic infrastructure and improve the natural resource base of local communities. After supporting the governments through extensive capacity building, UNCDF provides block grants to subsidize the construction of locally-determined infrastructure projects, such as schools, health clinics and markets.
In Ethiopia, UNCDF, working together with the UN Development programme (UNDP) and in collaboration with the Amhara national Regional State Bureau of Finance and Economic Development, are providing capital and technical assistance to local governments in the North Gondar Zone of Amhara National Regional State. The devolution of power to regional states and then to the districts is a centrepiece of Ethiopia's strategy for ending poverty by improving accountability, responsibility and flexibility in service delivery and increasing local participation in democratic decision making on factors affecting the livelihood of the local population.
The UNCDF-supported Development Fund is financing capacity building for planning and budgeting, backed up by block grants, which, together with grants from the government, ensure the priorities identified by local level government bodies and the community through the planning process actually get delivered. The types of infrastructure depend on the community. In Kokit it was water, in others it could be schools, health clinics, feeder roads, grinding mills or small scale irrigation.
Afework Fekadu, Institutional Development Technical Advisor of Local Development Project, emphasized the importance of water to people in the region. "Only 30 per cent of the population in North Gondar has access to reasonably safe domestic water supplies," he said. "As a result, water often comes up as a priority during the local planning process."
Fekadu said that through a recently-concluded related initiative called the Woreda Development Fund Project, more than 180 water points were built. "With each we provided training in operations and maintenance. As a result of this effort, more than 51,600 people now have access to dependable potable water supplies within a reasonable walking distance from their homes. "
For more information on UNCDF programmes in Ethiopia, please visit http://www.uncdf.org/ethiopia.
