Water Supply and Sanitation in Ethiopia

Water Supply And Sanitation In Ethiopia

This article was last comprehensively updated in August 2011, with minor updates in 2012. Despite the comprehensive update, some aspects of this article may be outdated, which is in part because primary data are only available for earlier years. Please feel free to update the article where needed.

Access to water supply and sanitation in Ethiopia is amongst the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa and the entire world. While access has increased substantially with funding from external aid, much still remains to be done to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of having the share of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015, to improve sustainability and to improve service quality.

Some factors inhibiting the achievement of these goals are the limited capacity of water bureaus in the country's nine regions and water desks in the 550 woredas; insufficient cost recovery for proper operation and maintenance; and different policies and procedures used by various donors, notwithstanding the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness.

In 2001 the government adopted a water and sanitation strategy that called for more decentralized decision-making; promoting the involvement of all stakeholders, including the private sector; increasing levels of cost recovery; as well as integrating water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion activities. Implementation of the policy apparently is uneven.

In 2005 the government announced highly ambitious targets to increase coverage in its Plan for Accelerated Sustained Development and to End Poverty (PASDEP) for 2010. The investment needed to achieve the goal is about US$300 million per year, compared to actual investments of US$39 million in 2001-2002. In 2010 the government presented the equally ambitious Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) 2011-2015 that aims at increasing drinking water coverage, based on the government's definition, from 68.5% to 98.5%. While donors have committed substantial funds to the sector, effectively spending the money and to ensure the proper operation and maintenance of infrastructure built with these funds remain a challenge.