Inspiring Water Entrepreneurship in Tigray region (iWET)

In Ethiopia 20-30% of the people have no access to clean water at reasonable distance (1.5km). However, in Tigray region access to clean water supply at reasonable distance (1.5km radius) remained about 70% unlike the national effort to reach to 100%. According to a baseline survey made in 2015 by ‘Restoring Water Systems Functionality in Tigray’ pilot project, maintenance service requests took an average of one month before getting proper response. Another baseline line conducted in 2017 in six iWET project implementation woredas reveals that out of 240 respondents 50% have indicated that, on average, their water point remained non-functional from two weeks to more than three months per year.

iWET project aims to contribute to the improved health and productivity of rural communities in 12 project woredas of Tigray region through dynamic private sector engagement who play a key role in post-construction support services. Over 800,000 people will benefit from the project.

This project, from June 2017 to May 2022, will

• establish 12 private local service provider teams in 12 woredas of Tigray region to provide efficient maintenance and spare part supply services to water, irrigation and renewable energy systems;

• reduce response time to maintenance requests to a maximum of 3 days;

• reduce the non-functionality of water, irrigation and renewable energy systems in project woredas to less than 10%;

• reduce the incidence of diahrea in health institutions of the target communities by 50% against the baseline data and increase crop productivity;

• ensure 65% of target WASHCOs in all project woredas deposit a minimum of 5000.00 birr each in their bank account;

• equip with and make use of portable water quality testing kits in 12 project woreda water offices to ensure bacteriological safety of water provided to communities;

• appraise five innovative approaches or tools for scaling up;

• benefit over 800,000 people through the use of sustainable and safe water from maintained and new water systems constructed at communities, schools and health centres;

iWET is financed by AFAS foundation through Woord and Daad (project lead), while SNV Ethiopia (leading the implementation), The Well in Action (TWA), Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), Tigray region Bureau of Water resources, Bureau of Health, Bureau of Small and Micro enterprises, Bureau of Youth and Sports affairs, Bureau of Education implement the project.