The Challenges and Prospects of Potable Water Mangement at Edja Woreda- Ethiopia

Ethiopia has the lowest access to potable water supply in Africa despite its abundant water resource. In the Edja Woreda of Guraghe Zone, the average distance travelled to collect water is 46 minutes. The financial sustainability of the drinking water sector in the Woreda remains an issue for all stakeholders: the providers, the users, government agencies and donors. There is no clear guidance for water activities at Woreda level. Thus, there are no clearly specified roles and responsibilities.

Therefore, the general objective of the study is to identify the challenges and prospects of potable water management in the Edja Woreda.



Text sample:

Chapter 2.1, Conceptualizing water management:

The basic water supply is defined as the provision of effective water use as well as a minimum quantity of 25 liters of potable water per person per day (or 6 000 liters per household per month) within 200 meters of a household, which is not interrupted for more than seven days in any year; and with a minimum flow of 10 liters per minute in the case of communal water points. Potable water is defined as drinking water that does not impose a health risk (Khambule, 2002).

Potable Water management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing and managing the optimum use of drinking water resources. In an ideal world, water management has regarded to all the competing demands for water and seeks to allocate water on an equitable basis to satisfy all uses and demands. Potable water supply services means the concept from a water resource, transportation, treatment, storage and distribution of potable water, water intended to be converted to potable water and water for industrial or other use, where such water is provided by or on behalf of a water services authority, to consumers or other water services providers (GWP et al., 2008).

2.1.1, Modalities of water service delivery:

There are five basic modalities of potable water management service delivery; namely: public provision (when the central or local government directly provide water services), private provision (when private company provide water services and charge clients), community based provision (when local community provide their own water services), public private partnership (when both public and private entities jointly provide water services) and multi stakeholder provision implies when a number of actors recognize their common water management problems and realize the value of their collective to solve those problems. Thus, in case of multi stakeholder water services provision is made through multi stakeholders (Miranda et al., 2011).

2.1.2, The tragedy of the commons:

Human beings are constantly making use of goods, natural resources, and spaces for consumption and waste disposal. The use of these goods, resources and space are also available to other users in many cases. However, the rational individual concludes that the benefits of the common can be enjoyed, without causing any more than the slightest damage to it. This rational individual conclusion and action is viewed by Garrett Hardin as the ‘the tragedy of the commons” (Christensen, 2005).

According to Hardin (1968), the tragedy comes as the usage of each common go beyond the optimal usage level. Hardin also applied his view to the situation created by pollution and quoted as ‘The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of ‘fouling our own nest,” so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free-enterprisers” (Hardin, 1968, p. 1245).

A common-pool resource like lake or ocean, irrigation system, forest, internet, the atmosphere, are natural or man-made resources from which it is difficult to limit or exclude once the resource is available for users. Accordingly, when a person consumes units of these resources, he/she remove those units available to others. This fact is applicable to both renewable natural common pool resources and man-made common pool resources. when a unit of common pool resources have high value with the absence of institutional restrict to limit the way resource units are appropriated, individuals get strong incentives to appropriate more and more resource units leading to congestion, overuse, and even the destruction of the resource itself. Thus, the free-rider problem is a potential threat to efforts that reduce appropriation and improve the long-term outcomes achieved from the use of the common pool resources (Ostrom, 1999).

2.1.3, Good governance:

In the 1990s, the term governance has attracted multilateral agencies like World Bank from the concern of the sustainability of projects financed by those agencies. The term governance particularly good governance which is characterized by different elements that are pointed out by different institutions based up on their own perception highly correlated with the notion of sustainable development (IFAD, 1999).

The former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has also bolded the importance of Good governance in achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by quoting as ‘Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development” (Abdellatif, 2003).

Good governance comprises the existences of effective mechanisms, processes and institutions that enable citizens and groups to articulate their interest, exercise their legal right, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. Good governance is characterized by those elements such as: participation, rule of low, transparency, responsiveness, and consensus orientation, equity, efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, coherent and integrative (Rogers and W. Hall, 2003).



Israel Yigezu was born in the Oromia Region of West Wollega Zone in 1980, and graduated from Mekelle University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics in 2003. The author worked as an International Finance and Development Institutions Cooperation Expert in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia. Later, he has joined World Vision Ethiopia where he still works today. He has also joined Hawassa University School of Law and Governance in 2010, and graduated in Development Studies and Governance Specialization in 2012.