• Reference: P-ZM-E00-003
• Approval date: 08/12/2000
• Start date: 30/06/2001
• Appraisal Date:
• Status: CompletedComp
• Location:
• Implementing Agency:

Alice Kuulu used to trudge for hours every day fetching water from a shallow well 2km away for her husband and six children  in the village of Kazungo in central Zambia.

Some days, it was a full-time job.  “Sometimes, it would take me two hours.  Sometimes, it would take six”, said Alice.  “It all depended on how much water we needed that day”.

But now that back-breaking, time-consuming job is over for Alice and all the other women in the village. 

Kazungo has its own water supply. The water comes straight from the underground aquifer via a borehole, drilled as part of the ADF-funded Rural Water Supply and Sanitation project.

The borehole connects on the surface to a simple hand pump.  “It’s so easy, even the children can use it!” said Alice.  Now Alice has more time to work in the fields, growing crops for her family, and for other odd jobs to earn money.

It was not just the convenience of the borehole that was important.  Not only was the well they used far away, its water was dirty and disease-ridden, contaminated by the filth and rubbish floating on the top, whereas the borehole water comes up from underground clean and fresh.

“My family used to get sick a lot”, said Alice, “We suffered from diarrhea and other illnesses, especially during the rainy season.”

There was the knock-on effect of that frequent sickness.  Alice and her husband could not work the fields, and the children lost days at school.

“We knew the water was making us sick”, said Alice, “but we had no choice.”

Not getting sick also meant saving on medical bills and money spent getting to the clinic. “We don’t worry about money as much any more”, said Alice.

Alice’s story is just one of many related to this ADF-funded project. The new water point at Kazungo is one of almost 3,500 boreholes that have come on-stream in the area since 2002 because of the project.

Getting water direct to the villagers was just one part of the five-year long project. The province gained more than 13,000 latrines, and 120,000 insecticide-treated bed nets were handed out.  The local communities were trained in hygiene, safe water storage and malaria control and prevention.

The results are clear.  Cases of malaria and water-borne diseases in the area have plummeted.  In Chilombo district alone, the diarrhea rate more than halved from 70 per cent to 30 per cent between 2004 and 2008.

The ADF-funded projected also helped to save trees.  If there are no trees, there is no water in the ground, so drilling the boreholes would be useless.  But the trees were under threat because people were making charcoal to earn money.

The project introduced an alternative: beekeeping and honey production.  That encouraged tree conservation, too.  As Wilson Mulubakwenda said, as he walked deep into the forest where he keeps his bee cages: “Without trees, you cannot produce honey and make good money.”

After training from the project, Wilson started out keeping bees in 2007.  Since then, his income has almost doubled from what he used to make as a farmer.  The evidence of his new prosperity lies in the new brick home he and his wife, Mary, have recently built.  It is a big improvement on the small mud and thatch shelter his family had lived in for years.

Wilson intends to make life even more comfortable for his family. “Honey costs less to produce than maize, and the local demand is high.  Next year, I hope to make enough money to buy nice new things for the house.”

Mecuria ASSEFAW - OWAS2

Finance source	Amount
ADF	UAC 12,410,000
Government	UAC 1,580,000
Total	UAC 13,990,000