Camel watering centres
Four solar-powered wells, funded by SIM Ethiopia, give people and hundreds of camels a reliable source of water.
Camels are the source of life for the Afar. They stand for wealth, security and the ability to get through hard times. But without water, they are exposed to repeated droughts and a changing climate.
About 1.7 million people live in the Afar region, and around 92% of them are pastoralists or agro-pastoralists living in rural areas (Central Statistical Agency, 2008). The region has a large number of livestock: an estimated 4.3 million goats, 2.5 million sheep, 2.4 million cattle, 850,000 camels and fewer than 200,000 donkeys, horses and mules. The climate is dry, with two short and unreliable rainy seasons, Sugum and Karma, and less than 300 mm of rain a year on average.
Many people have no access to clean, safe water. Women and girls spend half of every day walking to fetch drinking water. Each year men leave home for five or six months to look for water and grazing for their animals. In drought years they lose their herds when they cannot find water or pasture. Drought weakens the animals, lowers birth rates, brings outbreaks of disease and causes large numbers of livestock to die. Climate change has made this worse, as the Sugum and Karma rains fail more often.
We started the camel watering centre project to provide clean water for both people and animals. With funding from SIM Ethiopia, we drilled four wells between 2011 and 2014 in four kebeles of Dulessa district: Hurunto, Kalala, Toloyla and Edeli. All four still work well, and the communities run them on their own. The wells are between 54 and 90 metres deep. Solar panels pump the water into long troughs for the hundreds of camels that pass through the area.