GCSE Geography | Case Study: Hitosa Gravity-fed Water Project (Resource Management - Water 9)

Hitosa is a rural area in central Ethiopia (an LIC), south of the capital city of Addis Ababa. In the 1980s Ethiopia was the face of poverty around the globe, following widespread drought, famine and starvation, which brought the issue of global inequality to households in HICs, with the images of children starving triggering the huge Live Aid concert in 1984.

These days food security has improved for the people of Ethiopia, however poverty is still a huge issue and the country is within the Sahel region of northern Africa - a semi-arid area where the process of desertification is turning once fertile grasslands into desert. Poor land management in Ethiopia has contributed to this with the hot dry plains being over-cultivated meaning that soil gets exhausted and has no time to recover. Before the gravity-fed water scheme was developed local people relied on seasonal rivers, which had very little water flowing in them for much of the year.

Gravity-fed water schemes

Gravity-fed water supplies transfer water from upland sources through pipes to local tap stands, using only the force of gravity. The system is simple - it needs a upland source of water, such as a spring or stream, a main pipeline, storage tanks, distribution pipelines and tap stands for local people to obtain water (see diagram below).

They are slightly more expensive than water projects that extract water from the ground because they need very long pipes from the upland source to the villages needing water, and storage tanks are needed. However, once they have been set up the running costs are low, with just basic maintenance needed. They are seen as reliable solutions to water supply.

Gravity-fed water in Hitosa

In 1995 WaterAid (an non-governmental organisation - NGO) designed a gravity-fed water scheme for Hitosa and supported the local community it setting it up. The scheme uses water from the permanent springs high up on Mount Bada, which is taken down the slopes to more than 100 public tap stands and almost 150 connections for irrigation, via 140 km of pipeline. No pump is needed - it is just gravity that makes the water move down the slope to where it is needed, and the springs are surrounded by retaining walls meaning that they do not get contaminated, so there is no need to treat the water. The scheme has been managed by local people and maintained by a small charge to use the water, which is used to maintain the infrastructure. And unlike large-scale projects, there has been no misuse of funds.

Benefits of the scheme

The project is one of the largest water supply projects in Ethiopia, and has given 75,000 people in more than 40 villages access to a safe water supply of 25 litres a day, which is enough for drinking, cooking and cleaning. The tap stands are within 250 metres of all households meaning that the water supply is convenient for all, and the time previously taken for collecting water has been significantly reduced. This means that women can spend more hours doing paid work, and children can attend school more.

It has also increased the water available for irrigating farmland, which has meant farmers have increased their yields, resulting in more money for them, and improved food security overall. Almost 30 years later, the project is still working as it was when it was introduced.

The project relies on gravity rather than expensive pumps - the fact that the project is low-tech means the maintenance and running costs are low, and it rarely breaks down so offers a constant and reliable supply of water.

Drawbacks of the scheme

The initial set up costs are higher than projects that get water from underground and the terrain means that laying pipelines can be difficult. Additionally, the pipeline will need replacing after 30 years and there are fears that this will be too expensive.

The community were not taught the importance of hygiene and sanitation around the tap stands – so disease is common.

There have been tensions over water use - for example, people living closer to the upland sources feel that their supply of water has been taken from them, and villagers often complain that too much of the water is being used for agriculture, which limits the amount available for domestic used. The availability of water in the area has also caused an influx of migration which could cause further tensions over access to resources in the future.

Sustainable water management

The Hitosa Gravity-fed Water Project is an example of a sustainable strategy to increase water supply. Sustainable solutions have the following features in common...

Small scale - sustainable solutions to increasing water supply are usually small-scale - they improve the quality of life for individual communities, rather than whole regions or countries. They are easy to manage and relatively cheap.

Appropriate technology - these are small projects using basic machinery that are cheap and easy to maintain, for example, hand pumps. This is better than using complex machinery that require specialist skills to operate and maintain.

Community management - sustainable water projects need to be managed by the local community, rather than relying on other people - for example, local people build and maintain them, so it they breakdown they know how to carry out repairs.

Local decision making - local people decide what they need to improve their water supply, where they will build their project, how big it is, etc - this is an important part of sustainable solutions - it’s not just telling the people involved what they need - therefore there is more by-in and projects are likely to be more effective.

Non-governmental organisation - NGOs have no government funding and rely on donations, e.g. Oxfam and Wateraid, who both work across LICs and NEEs to improve access to safe and reliable water supplies. NGOs are important here as they give local communities the support and skills they need to get their sustainable water projects up and running.