Sand Dams in Borana Zone, Ethiopia

The catchment approach: an example project of combining water harvesting techniques in Borana, southern Ethiopia

The Borana Zone in southern Ethiopia is a semi-arid region in which rural communities depend mostly on livestock farming (mostly pastoralists) and small-scale agriculture. Both activities are highly constrained by water availability, there being no perennial rivers and with rainfall varying highly, both spatially and temporally. Communities live in very remote areas, with no access to water, electricity or sanitation facilities. Children in this region have the lowest school enrolment rate in the country, spending substantial amounts of time in collecting water and in addition to other domestic tasks.

Water harvesting has proven to be an attractive decentralised water source in areas where other means of water supply have little potential, like in Borana. However, roof water harvesting is not effective from thatched roofs and storage of surface runoff in tanks can only provide sufficient water for the dry period and the quality is questionable. Therefore the sand dam technology provides an attractive solution for the people of Borana.

Sand dam site after first flood event in Borana, (ERHA, 2008)


Communities are already known with the phenomenon of collecting water from ephemeral river beds. However the sand dam technology itself is not very common in Ethiopia. During an award winning pilot project which started in 2007, RAIN, ERHA, AFD, Acacia and SASOL conducted several trainings for 10 NGOs throughout the country and implemented 7 sand dams in combination with 10 surface runoff tanks in Borana. This innovative combination of infrastructure, to recharge groundwater and to harvest surface runoff water, will ensure drinking and productive use water in the short- and long-term for communities living both adjacent to an ephemeral watershed (by sand dams) and those further away (by rainwater harvesting tanks) (see figure1). The project will increase access to a reliable source of water for at least 10 communities in the critically dry Borana Zone and an environment for further upscaling in other parts of the country has been created.

Hypothetical example of catchment approach in rainwater harvesting: combining sand dams and rainwater harvesting tanks in one (sub)catchment.