Water, Ethiopia, Wuha Sira

When you got up this morning and took your shower, you probably used some 65 liters of water. Washing your face, brushing your teeth, etc. consumed up to 20 liters more. And if you turned on the dishwasher as you left the house, and began drinking your recommended 2.7-3.7 liters per day of water, your total consumption was probably already around 113 liters.? And you have just started your day! Experts estimate that the average American uses about 385 liters of water per day; and that Europeans are not far behind, with consumption of between 100 and 300 liters per day, depending on the country.

In Ethiopia, your normal morning would be radically different. Safe water for drinking might not even be available; boiled water for tea or coffee would have to do. Unless you were among the well-to-do, there would be no toilet to flush or shower to turn on. For cooking, washing, cleaning, and watering animals, water would be carefully doled out from the yellow jerry cans that hold the family's precious supply of safe, clean water. The mother or the daughter would leave early in the morning for the first trip of the day to fetch the water the family needs, which often involves walking up to 6km with a jerry can of water weighing some 18 kg strapped to your back. Rather than consuming 113 liters of water before leaving home –twice as much as the average Ethiopian might use in a week--, if you were female you would likely arrive late to school or work because you had been out fetching the bare minimum water supply that your family needed to start the day.

Ethiopia has one of the most dire water access situations in today′s world.? According to World Bank data, only 11% of its population uses safely managed drinking water services, the third worst figure in the world.? Only 8% of them have access to basic handwashing facilities, and the mortality rate attributed to unsafe water, unsafe sanitation, and lack of hygiene is 44 per 100,000 population.? The amount of clean water that an American or European individual consumes per day is around 50 times the amount of safe water that the average Ethiopian is able to obtain on a daily basis.

More than 10 years ago, IE Economics Professor Gayle Allard, PhD began taking IE students to the southern city of Dilla, Ethiopia, on a study project each summer to learn about poverty and economic development first-hand.? She and the IE students, who volunteered as English teachers to girls in the poorest parts of the city, came away with a profound interest in the water problem, which in Dilla (population about 100,000) is one of the worst in Ethiopia.? They conducted numerous impact projects, interviews with experts, on-site visits of other water projects, and basic research to try to seek ways to get more clean water affordably to the people of Dilla.

Their research and contacts from almost a decade in Dilla led them to launch a social entrepreneurship project headed by a local businessman, which they called Brightwater. The project involved installing solar panels and new pumps on city wells that had been abandoned for years because the original hand pumps were broken. The social entrepreneur sold the water in clean jerrycans at a price just above cost, and handed it out free to the poorest families.? The pumps, solar panels, storage tanks and other equipment were purchased by an NGO which Dr. Allard founded called Wuha Sira (water and work, in the local Amharic tongue), whose board members are all IE alumni. The IE Foundation has supported Wuha Sira from the early years of the project with an annual grant.

Brightwater turned out to be a success.? The entrepreneur covered costs and realized a small profit on the pilot project, which encouraged him to expand to a total of four new wells with grants from Wuha Sira.? Each well provided clean water at a low price to up to 350 local individuals, and created four direct jobs for women along with indirect employment in construction, manufacturing and delivery. The clean water supply of Dilla rose by more than 15,000 liters a month with each well, and thousands of hours in the life of women and girls were freed up for other tasks, including work and education. Dr. Allard continued visiting Dilla with IE students each summer to oversee, improve and expand the project until 2020, when the pandemic began and civil war broke out in Ethiopia.?

The Ethiopian civil war was fought mostly in the north and ended in the fall of 2022. But it destabilized the national government, and even in far-flung cities like Dilla, a fragile political and social equilibrium was shattered.? Brightwater′s owner was first taken forcibly, along with some of the company′s storage tanks, to manage water distribution in a nearby region suffering from drought. When he was allowed to return to Dilla, the opposition party had won power in the city and he was jailed without trial, presumably because of his links to the former government. Once he was freed and any charges dropped, he discovered that some of the solar panels and other equipment had been stolen or damaged by vandals, and he was being criticized for selling water that “belonged to the people”.? Only one well of the four was still fully functional, and Brightwater needed a major capital injection if it was to get back on its feet.

As a result, Wuha Sira today finds itself at a crossroads.? The basic needs of the population are even more dire than before the war and pandemic, but reinvesting in a country riven by instability is risky. Brightwater′s model was workable, sustainable and affordable for a small NGO like Wuha Sira, but can it be revived? Is an entirely new approach needed? In either case, a major cash injection will be required.

Wuha Sira from the beginning had also awarded scholarships to local girls from some of the poorest families to attend school, and it has expanded this program.? It also had a dream of creating a university scholarship for local women to study water science and management, which it plans to pursue.? But the need for clean, safe water continues to be much more pressing than education or any other objective in the lives of the Ethiopian people.? Wuha Sira would like to continue to meet this need in the best way it can find, with the support of the IE Foundation and its other donors.

Learn more about Wuha Sira here: https://www.wuhasira.org/

Discover other social impact initiatives supported by IE Foundation: https://www.ie.edu/ie-foundation/