October 23, 2024, marked the 28th day since the residents of a condominium site in Addis Ababa’s Arabsa neighborhood last had running water. A few lucky ones, living on the ground floor of the expansive public housing complex in an area commonly referred to as Aboye, had a steady trickle coming from their taps. Their neighbors residing on any of the six upper floors were not so fortunate.
Aboye is hardly the exception, as taps are running dry all across the capital. Experts warn that unless a solution can be found, and quickly, living in the fast-expanding city could soon become untenable.
“A neighbor told me he once asked a man living on the ground floor for some water. He demanded 100 birr for 20 liters,” reads a recent Facebook post by a veteran journalist. “We’re becoming so uncharacteristically stingy with one another. One month without water. It’s very difficult. We’re getting messy.”
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The scarcity of water is an everyday struggle for Chaltu Gonfa, who resides at one of Arabsa’s condominium sites.
Although the scarcity of water has offered the mother of three an opportunity to earn a little extra money, Chaltu and her husband, who works as a laborer, can hardly keep up with the added expense of buying clean water for their home.
“I earn some money fetching water for people in the neighborhood,” said Chaltu.
That money, however, often goes right back towards purchasing water for her family.
“We consume at least two jerry cans of water [daily] and each 20-liter jerry can costs 20 birr,” she said.
On laundry days or when Chaltu, her husband, and their three children take a bath, the family might have to shell out as much as 100 birr for water.
The story is the same elsewhere in Addis Ababa, where even the best served neighborhoods can only hope to get running water twice a week. Many in the city get by using water tankers, which they used to store the precious aqua until it is their turn to have it running from their taps.
The acute water shortage stands in stark contrast to the capital’s ever-expanding construction projects, including the Prime Minister’s Chaka Project in the hills of Yeka as well as a massive public housing project in the city’s southeastern periphery, which is expected to constitute a reported 60,000 residential units.
Worse still, as construction gets expedited, people are often relocated from inner-city areas to the peripheries, and even to adjoining Sheger City, only to find themselves caught in a level of water scarcity that they could hardly have imagined. Their new homes may appear superior to the dilapidated hovels they leave behind for the bulldozers, but what is a home without water?
The capital’s water problem is certainly nothing new, but it appears to be growing worse. Experts have long been urging the government to work out a solution before things hit rock bottom.
Among them is Tirusew Assefa (PhD), the planning and decision support lead at Tampa Bay Water, a leading water supply company in the southeastern US. Tirusew also chairs the Florida Water and Climate Alliance.
Together with Fekadu Moreda (PhD), he authored a 2023 study on the Ethiopian capital’s worsening water supply problem.
The paper, titled ‘A Roadmap to Address Addis Ababa’s Chronic Urban Water Supply is Needed: A Call for Immediate Action!’, was presented during a UN conference on climate resilient infrastructure earlier this year.
“We are pretty much in the worst-case scenario right now, where a lot of people get water a day or two in a week. Access inequality is so wide that those who can afford to use tankers are relatively better off, whereas people who buy jerry cans pay 10 to 24 times what I pay in the US or what someone pays in Europe,” Tirusew told The Reporter Magazine.
His research found that Addis Ababa’s residents spend 20 percent of their household income on buying water from a burgeoning market consisting of water vendors using jerry cans or repurposed trucks.
Tirusew notes the quality of water offered by these vendors is difficult to verify.
“I hope it doesn’t get worse than this. If it does, it would be a nightmare,” he said.
The study warns that the city’s ubiquitous water storage tanks and heavy levels of groundwater pumping are leading to an inability to maintain adequate residual levels and ensure water quality.
Data from the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority (AAWSA) reveals that only seven of the nearly 120 woredas in the capital enjoy a steady supply of water seven days a week. A look at the here-and-now however point to a situation where no part of the city goes without water rationing.
Tirusew warns the situation could deteriorate further if the authorities do not take immediate action.
“We will be seeing conditions where only a few privileged folks continue to get access to water while the majority are in big trouble,” he told The Reporter Magazine.
Addis Ababa gets its supply, which lags far behind the estimated 1.2 million cubic meters in daily demand, from two sources: groundwater and surface water.
Three dams in Gefersa, located to the west of the capital, have the capacity to hold 7.5 million cubic meters of water in their reservoirs. The dams were inaugurated in 1942 and last renovated in 2009.
The supply from Gefersa, however, pales in comparison to the Legedadi Dam’s reservoir capacity, which sits near 40 million cubic meters. The latter has been the primary source of the city’s freshwater since it was opened in 1970, during the Imperial era. Today, it accounts for 70 percent of the city’s water supply.
A smaller dam near Legedadi, called Dire, has a reservoir capacity of 19 million cubic meters.
Nonetheless, the reservoirs are unable to quench demand and Addis Ababa has grown increasingly dependent on groundwater over the last couple of decades.
“A total of 224 boreholes have been drilled for groundwater supply, out of which 143 are reportedly currently operational,” reads the study.
Groundwater, the study says, is cheaper to produce and can come online in a relatively short time in comparison to surface water systems, whose development, treatment and delivery can be quite taxing.
“Unfortunately, people continue to rely heavily on groundwater, and it is a dangerous proposition since groundwater abstraction in the city is not coordinated and there isn’t really a database that indicates who uses how much,” Tirusew said.
Groundwater use is not limited to residential utility, either.
There are some studies, though fragmented, that point to industries such as tanneries, textile factories and breweries, among others, as major consumers of water.
For example, brewing giant Heineken churns out part of its 5.6 million hectoliters in annual production, respectively, from its plant in the capital.
A recently published study authored by Kumelo Dino et al raised concerns about the brewery’s effect on freshwater supply.
“Heineken beer factory in Ethiopia relies on groundwater, raising concerns about potential aquifer depletion and the subsequent drop in water tables, rendering water effectively inaccessible,” reads the study titled ‘Assessment of Water Footprint of the Brewery Industry.’
The paper indicates that Heineken’s Kilinto brewery features five water wells, with each pumping out 141 cubic meters of water per hour. Producing one liter of beer requires as much as five liters of freshwater.
Tirusew’s study claims that several 250 and 500-meter deep wells in Akaki-Kality dried up between 2017 and 2019. It cautions that groundwater quality will also soon be affected by the over-pumping.
“It is very well documented that wells from the early 2000s that were about 250 meters deep have dried up. Recent data from a well field in the suburb of Akaki, for example, shows significant yield reductions in several groundwater wells,” said the expert.
He noted that these reductions are attributed to pump failures, unconnected boreholes, and a decline in water levels.
“If the question is ‘Can we still continue to use the groundwater in and around Addis Ababa?’ Absolutely. But is this going to satisfy the city’s needs? Can we sustain the current extraction levels? Absolutely not!” he told The Reporter Magazine.
Tirusew, who was the 2022 recipient of the Outstanding Practitioner in Water Resources Engineering Award from the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers, observes it is difficult to determine how much freshwater Addis Ababa needs.
“It is difficult to accurately estimate current per-capita water use in the city because of the significant gap between demand and supply as well as the highly unbalanced distribution of water use. This is because the few who can store water in tanks on their premises use much more than a family that lives in a condo with nowhere to store the water,” he said.
Tirusew estimates that less than 30 percent of the capital’s households consume up to 80 percent of the water supply.
However, the lack of accurate and up-to-date population data clouds the estimation even further.
The last official government census, which was conducted in 2007, placed Addis Ababa’s population at 2.73 million.
UN Habitat, in 2021, estimated the figure had grown to 3.3 million. A study by Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael (PhD) at the University of Manchester put the capital’s metro area population in 2024 at a little over 5.7 million.
The figure contradicts the Central Statistics Agency’s forecast that Addis Ababa’s population would surpass five million some time in 2036.
Despite the conflicting data, Tirusew estimates the city can only meet 40 percent of 1.2 million cubic meters in daily demand.
“The result has also been confirmed in a survey we conducted, which found that most people get water only two times per week,” he said. “Statistically speaking, if there is 50 percent coverage, people should get water every other day and that amounts to 3 to 4 days a week. But that is not the reality we see.”
He noted there have been any new water supply infrastructure projects that have come online since the study was conducted.
On the other hand, the administration has been busy with its massive corridor development initiative, which has seen hundreds of thousands of residents uprooted from their inner city homes over the past year.
Addis Ababa is also home to countless real estate development projects, with tens of thousands of units under construction, while the ‘Chaka Smart City’ project is bound to have an impact on the present and future use of water.
For Tirusew, it suffices to have a look at the big picture.
“The big picture remains the same. Without increasing supply, the shortage remains the same. What changes is the distribution of the available supply. That is why in our paper we indicated that the water issue needed to be looked at in Addis Ababa and surrounding areas as one big metro district. There are examples of successful water utility in major metro areas around the world that are set up as such. I work for the Tampa Bay metro area water company and our customers’ geographical boundaries are as big as Addis Ababa’s and we move huge volumes of water long distance. There are many examples like that as well. You need to satisfy the entire metro area’s water needs,” he said.
Tirusew observes the unmonitored and unregulated well drilling that is taking place at the industries and real estate developments that have mushroomed all over the city over the past couple of decades is another significant issue.
He cautions, if ignored, the trend could end up sucking dry what little is left in the city’s aquifers.
While the city’s Water and Sewerage Authority remains hermetically sealed to media inquiry, shunning The Reporter Magazine’s repeated requests for information, a well-placed source revealed that not much is being done to address the problems.
While acknowledging the importance of drilling small-scale wells and rainwater harvesting here and there as temporary relief, Tirusew, nevertheless, argues that the problem can only be tackled through projects of scale.
“The gap between supply and demand is so big that the problem we are facing in Addis Ababa will require a quantum shift in thinking around the problem and calls for a bold solution. Tinkering around with small fixes will not benefit the growth of this emerging city and country,” he said.
“Solving the water issue comes down to diversification, also. Groundwater is not enough. The Ethiopian government needs to be innovative and do once-in-a-generation projects like GERD to solve the Addis Ababa water issue once and for all,” said the expert.
Tirusew urges officials to make use of the country’s growing electric power generation.
“Given Addis Ababa’s challenging topography for water supply distribution with many booster pumps, and multiple pressure zones to operate, it is time now to leverage energy production in the country,” he said.
Tirusew warns that without a project of scale, the capital’s water woes herald a serious disaster.
Officials would do well to heed the advice, but, until then, people like Chaltu will have to resort to paying exorbitant prices for the basic necessity that is water, and lugging 20-liter jerry cans up and down the stairwells of housing projects.
Tamirat Getachew contributed to this story
