1294 – Clean drinking water Zoba Maekel, Eritrea
Improving access to clean water for better health
Eritrea is highly vulnerable to droughts, floods, soil erosion, desertification, and land degradation. Suffering from Africa’s highest levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, this situation is expected to be exacerbated by climate change. For many rural communities, the struggle to find safe drinking water can take a major part of a family‘s resources. Usually, the burden falls on women and children to collect water, walking a great distance from home. Water drawn from pools or rivers is often contaminated with potentially lethal bacteria. Thus, to make water safe to drink it needs to be boiled.
This project helps to identify and repair broken boreholes in the Zoba Maekel district, located in the Central Region of Eritrea, showing high levels of poverty. Many boreholes are owned by community-based organizations (CBOs) and have broken down because maintenance programmes have been poorly managed, or proved too expensive. This project supports communities in renovating their boreholes so that they deliver clean water and breakdowns are quickly fixed.