Catching Rain: Sand Dams and Other Strategies for Developing Locally Resilient Water Supplies in Semiarid Areas of Kenya

Abstract

Water is one of the key limiting factors in arid, semiarid, and subhumid lands throughout Africa. Reducing the labor demand involved in the daily efforts to find and haul water releases available time to women to pursue productive agricultural activities and care for their families. This, in turn, improves resilience at the household and community level. Sand dams have proven an excellent way to do this in the subhumid and semiarid areas of Kitui, Machakos, and Makueni Counties in Kenya and are spreading further inside and outside the country. The key to building a sand dam is community involvement from the earliest stage in the process. Locally controlled and organized NGOs are the primary promoters of this activity. The community development groups, called self-help groups, site the dam, prepare the supporting infrastructure, build the dam, and coordinate local control of the new resource. This then drops the water collection time from more than 3 hours per day to as little as 15 minutes. The work then continues with promotion of drought-resistant crops, better fodder supply, and income security.

Most of this article is based on my work with two nongovernment organizations, SASOL and the Utooni Development Organization (UDO) in 2009, 2011, and 2013, spending time building dams, visiting even more sites, and conversing with their leaders, field workers, and area farmers. Field work was done with field agents of UDO and five students from the Kenya Field School, a study abroad program of James Madison University. All the pictures are mine.