Commitment to self supply made at the 6th World Water Forum

Published on: 15/03/2012

At the 6^th World Water Forum held in Marseille, France in March 2012, the Ethiopian government made two commitments. One is to establish a programme to accelerate self supply as a mechanism to reach some of the more than 30% of rural Ethiopians without safe water supplies. The other commitment is to establish a harmonised One National WASH programme. A large delegation, led by the State Minister Ato Kebebe Gerba actively participated in the forum and presented achievements made by the country in numerous sessions including the innovative Community Managed Projects (CMP) approach.

The Government of Ethiopia commits “to establish self supply as a service delivery mechanism for rural water, within the national WASH programme and alongside community-managed approaches. Promoting and supporting self supply will encourage families to protect and make self-supply sources safe and use them productively. Government intervention focuses on developing the enabling environment, promoting the approach, capacity building, encouraging innovation in appropriate technology, developing water works enterprises and supply chains for low-cost technologies and facilitating access to existing credit mechanisms for both households and enterprises”. Investment in self-supply water sources themselves are made by households and often using technologies and services provided by the private sector.

Speaking at a session organised by the Rural Water Supply Network in the Village of Solutions, the Ministry of Water and Energy’s (MoWE) focal person for self supply, Zewditu Yilma, highlighted that government policy now supports self supply which over 3 years is expected to create at least 100 local water works enterprises and 100,000 new household-level water sources.

IRC are supporting the MoWE to establish its self-supply acceleration programme. The programme is based upon a new policy guideline approved in January 2012.