Addis Ababa’s Water Progress Trap

In 1991, the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority drew up a plan to supply adequate water for the city by the year 2020. It was called Stage III, and it combined building multiple surface water dams with groundwater wells to meet the city's growing population. Fast forward to now. The 2020 deadline has passed, and I still live in a neighborhood that gets water twice a week.

The water scarcity in my neighborhood is not unusual. You can see the proof of it in bathrooms across the city. A large blue plastic barrel of water sits next to the sink, meant for the days the tap water runs out. You see it in homes, concert venues, wedding halls, government offices, shopping malls. I have seen these barrels at Millennium Hall during a packed event, at the government-owned National Archives library, in the bathrooms of commercial malls like Morning Star, and at cafes in Bole where the interior design costs more than the plumbing ever will.

The 50-liter blue plastic barrel in the corner of the bathroom is so common that nobody mentions it as an issue anymore. It has simply become a standard piece of bathroom furniture, reflecting the reality of a city that meets barely 40% of its daily demand. In 2008, a field survey of three central neighborhoods, Teklehaimanot, Merkato, and Biheretsige, found that more than 75% of households consumed less than 20 liters per person per day, against a WHO minimum of 50 liters. No comparable neighborhood-level surveys have been published since that dated study, at least none I could find, but aggregate studies from 2023 suggest the shortfall has not improved. Rationing isn't a matter of debate for anyone who lives here. You could ask anyone. Even the AAWSA website acknowledges the problem by publishing a rationing schedule, even if that schedule is visibly incomplete.

And it might get much worse. A study projects that under current trajectory, Addis Ababa's existing sources will cover only 17% of total demand by 2050. The study calls this the worst-case scenario. At 17% coverage, more than eight million residents in a projected population of 10 million would live without reliable tap water. Waterborne disease, already elevated, would likely cross into outbreak territory. Informal water markets, already growing, would become the main supply system for most households, and water would be priced as a luxury. The wealthy would buy larger rooftop tankers and draw from informal vendors. The poor would be left with less as others hoard more. And this is 2050. It is closer to us now than the year Dire Dam, the city's most recently completed reservoir, was built.

Since the issue is obvious, what is the city doing about it?

One could argue that the city has made real progress in developing its water capacity since its formation, even if those gains are constantly swallowed by the demands of a surging population. This development marks a long journey from the city's earliest days. Back then, residents relied on hand-dug wells and the mountain springs of Entoto, and also often drew their daily supply directly from the Kebena and Kechene rivers. The city eventually outgrew its reliance on scattered wells and mountain springs, when it inaugurated its first treatment plant at Entoto in 1938. The momentum continued with the Gefersa dam in 1944 and its expansion in 1960. After that, modernization was formalized into stages:

Table: Addis Ababa Water Development Phases. A simplified timeline of the city's major water supply modernization stages.

Phase	Project Scope	Commissioned	Status
Stage I	Legedadi Dam and Treatment Plant	1970	Completed
Stage II	Legedadi Expansion and Gefersa Rehabilitation	1980s	Completed
Stage III	The 1991 Plan, intended to serve through 2020	1991	Incomplete / Stalled

What happened to the AAWSA Stage III plan?

Stage III was planned to be the next catch-up. In 1984, a Canadian consultancy called Associated Engineering Services Limited published a reconnaissance study for AAWSA and identified a potential surface water source at Sibilu, a small river northwest of the city on the Sululta Plain. Sibilu is not much of a river. It is a small tributary of the Muger river, near the town of Chancho that eventually feeds the Abay, the Blue Nile. You will not easily find it on Google Maps. And yet this is the river the entire Stage III plan was built around.

The reason such a massive plan centers on such a small river lies in the landscape rather than the water flow. While a power-generating dam needs a rushing river, a water-supply dam is mostly built to catch and hold seasonal rain. For this job, the shape of the land matters much more than the size of the stream itself. Sibilu sits on a wide, flat plateau high above the Entoto ridge that forms a natural bowl, making it a perfect storage site. Because this basin is at a much higher altitude than the city, the water can flow into Addis Ababa by gravity alone, decreasing the expensive electric pumps.

After decades of studies from international consultants, however, it became clear that building the full vision at once was a logistical and financial impossibility. To make progress, the plan was to split Stage III into manageable chapters. Stage III-A began with work on the Gerbi Dam, which sits on the same tributary system as the Sibilu. It was chosen because its smaller scale and lower cost offered a much faster path to completion than the main project. Alongside the dam, the Akaki wellfields were prioritized to tap into groundwater for immediate relief. This entire initial phase was intended to sustain the city until the arrival of Stage III-B, which is the construction of the massive Sibilu Dam itself.

Table: Stage III Project Summary. Not all projects are listed, and treatment plants for the dams are categorized as separate projects. As the complete official plan has not been made public, this information is subject to updates over time.

Project Component	Location	Water Source	Projected Output (m3/day)	Key Infrastructure
Akaki Wellfield	South	Groundwater (Aquifer)	125,000	1991 Drilling Program
Gerbi Dam	North	Gerbi River (Blue Nile)	77,000	10km north of Gefersa
Sibilu Dam	North (Chancho)	Sibilu River Reservoir	611,500	Wosserbi Plant and 4.8km Tunnel

Safe to say, things did not go as planned. While the ambitious Stage III surface water plans were stuck in a cycle of redesigns and funding delays, the city faced a severe shortage that could not wait for the long-sought objective of the Sibilu Dam. In response, the city shifted to an emergency strategy focused on two key components: finishing the Akaki wellfields and building a new dam, called Dire Dam.

The emergency plan was designed to secure water as quickly as possible, and the Dire Dam served as an ideal bridge for this new mission. Because of its proximity to the existing Legedadi system, the project did not require a new treatment plant, so it allowed engineers to leverage infrastructure that was already in place. By using the pipes and infrastructure that were already on the ground, the project was finished in 1998 after only two years of work, adding 42,000 cubic meters per day to the city's supply. While this offered immediate relief, the most significant change to the city's trajectory came when the Akaki wellfields were completed and the city moved from focusing on surface water to a large-scale reliance on groundwater.

Groundwater extraction changed everything for Addis Ababa

Before the late 1990s, Addis Ababa relied almost entirely on surface water. Although deep-drilling rigs had been in Ethiopia since the mid-1970s, they were used almost exclusively for rural relief and shallow wells in the countryside to counter the droughts occurring at the time. It wasn't until the Stage III plan hit a wall of funding and engineering delays that groundwater was prioritized and introduced as an emergency lifeline.

This shift led the city to focus on extracting groundwater from the Akaki wellfield. With French consultants mapping the aquifers and the help of Japanese technical support, extraction was possible and it became a lifeline that bypassed the gridlock of these dams. A borehole could be finished in weeks for a fraction of the upfront cost of a dam, it offered a much faster way to get water to residents.

Drill Baby Drill...?

It was working. The government was able to extract water much faster and at a lower cost, to the point the city went "all in" on what was no longer just an emergency quick fix. In a single generation, Addis Ababa shifted from being 100% dependent on surface dams to its current reality, where roughly 60% of its water is pumped from beneath the ground. The Akaki wellfield was only the beginning. Over the following two decades, AAWSA drilled more than 100 wells, expanded into new wellfields southwest and west of Old Akaki, northeast at Legedadi-Legetafo-Ayat, and further out at South Ayat-North Fanta and Sebeta-Tefki. A total groundwater output of roughly 404,000 cubic meters per day is now spread across these fields, scattered boreholes, and protected springs.

So what's the problem? Wells are cheaper than dams, faster to build. Just drill more wells.

What was meant to be a temporary bridge has effectively become the city's permanent strategy, and the consequences have begun to surface. Groundwater is a finite resource that depletes whenever extraction outpaces natural recharge, yet the city is currently in a state of "firefighting" where we simply drill deeper and further as old sources fail. While a standard deep-well pump is designed to last 20 to 30 years, many in Addis are failing in just a few years due to over-pumping and technical collapse. At the Akaki wellfield, 13 of the 24 original wells have already been abandoned entirely due to collapsing water levels.

This crisis is being accelerated by the unregulated self-supply of hotels and luxury real estate developers, who now use their "independent wells" as a primary marketing tool to woo buyers. By drilling into the same shared aquifers as the city utility, these private developments are decreasing the overall water level of the city even faster. Unlike the city, which can theoretically move to a new location when a well goes dry, these real estate projects are fixed to their land. When the water beneath them vanishes, they will have no secondary "emergency plan" for their residents to fall back on, unless the city utility is there to support them.

So groundwater is finite, and was meant to be used until the surface water dams are completed. Why is it so hard to complete these dams?

A dam costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and a water utility is not a profitable business. AAWSA does not collect enough in tariffs to cover its own operating costs, let alone service debt on a dam. In most developing-country cities, water is priced below the cost of delivering it, because pricing it at full cost would put water out of reach for most residents. A commercial bank looking at water tariffs as collateral would find nothing worth lending against. So water infrastructure depends on concessional lenders. For Ethiopia, the usual lenders are the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and China's policy banks. If these lenders pull back, a project can stall for years.

Gerbi is the clearest example. Its construction was financed by a concessional loan from China Eximbank. One partial disbursement reached AAWSA before the lender suspended further lending, citing concerns about Ethiopia's debt sustainability.

So let the residents fundraise. Ethiopians financed GERD through diaspora bonds and domestic subscription. Do the same for water, it's just as important, is it not?

It's a fair point, but GERD was of course a national project. It had a massive constituency and carried a unifying symbolism that stood up to external pressure. Because it generates electricity for the entire country, every Ethiopian could, in principle, see a benefit. A fundraising campaign for a water dam is a much harder sell because these projects are local and distributed by their very nature. We can't build one "Grand Water Reservoir" and ship the water across the country; water is far too heavy and expensive to transport compared to electricity.

Not only that, while a national project like GERD acts as a unifying force, municipal water dams often become sites of intense friction among regions. These projects are multi-regional by nature, creating a complex tug-of-war between the jurisdictions that hold the resource and the city that needs it. The planned Sibilu and Gerbi dams for example, are physically located in the Sululta and Welmera districts of the Oromia region, yet they are managed by federal authorities to serve Addis Ababa.

While international funding played a role in stalling Gerbi Dam, the primary gridlock was also political. According to regional water security reports, Oromia officials cut all communications with federal water authorities for over 48 months in the late 2010s. This total silence effectively blocked contractor access to the land, leaving the project in a state of paralysis while the city struggled with water rationing. This situation is far from unique however. Across the globe, the survival of major cities frequently depends on water sources located in neighboring regions and this usually creates room for conflict.

To show some similar conflicts:

• Delhi vs. Haryana: New Delhi is almost entirely dependent on the Munak Canal, which runs through the neighboring state of Haryana. In 2016, local protestors breached the canal, completely cutting off water to millions in the capital to use as political leverage.
• New York City vs. Upstate NY: For decades, upstate towns felt like "colonies" of the city. The friction was only resolved when the city agreed to pay for upstate infrastructure and taxes in exchange for protecting the watershed.

How do these cities fix their issues with neighboring regions?

One common pattern that worked in every case was to stop treating the water source as a resource to be taken and start treating the host region as a partner in the profit. It worked for Addis Ababa as well, with the Gerbi Dam, where the 48-month communication blackout between regional and the city capital's authorities finally ended once the project was redesigned to provide clean water to the surrounding Oromia districts. Even with this regional gridlock settled however, the city is still left with the challenge of finding the money to actually build the infrastructure.

So where can a city find the capital needed to build this infrastructure?

The last and most attainable resort for long-term sustainability is to price it in, generating the capital needed for these dams while creating a ripple effect of financial stability across the entire water system. This is fundamentally a shift towards what is called "Cost Recovery," a management model where the revenue generated from water sales covers the total cost of operation, maintenance, and future capital investments.

For decades, Ethiopia has treated water as a social gift, a noble policy rooted in the idea that every citizen deserves access to a basic necessity. However, this system is now starting to hurt the very people it is trying to protect. Data reveals that 80% of the water is being used by only 20% of the population, largely due to hoarding by large tankers that exploit subsidized rates. Unless the government is prepared to continuously fund these massive projects from other sectors, the utility is left without the resources to maintain the very access it aims to provide. Consequently, Ethiopian water experts now argue that until water is treated as an economic good, the utility will never be solvent enough to build its way out of the deficit.

The biggest challenge in this transition is designing a framework that achieves cost recovery without hurting the poor, so that the wealthy can cover the majority of the costs. Other countries have broken this cycle by implementing Increasing Block Tariffs (IBT). In South Africa, for example, the government provides a "Free Basic Water" allowance to low-income households but charges exponentially higher rates for luxury consumption, such as swimming pools and large gardens. Similarly, Chile moved to a full cost-recovery model where the utility is run like a business, but the government provides direct "water stamps" (subsidies) to the poor so they aren't crushed by the market price.

It seems Addis Ababa is already moving in a direction to open the path to cost recovery. AAWSA has introduced new tariff tiers specifically designed to make high-volume industries and luxury estates pay a premium. There is no question that even low-tier residents are affected by this scheme as the planned pricing increases across the board, but as the crisis looms, it seems like it is a tough decision the city is willing to make to improve the sector. As the sector starts earning money through cost recovery, it will even start getting attractive to get commercial loans, providing the capital needed to build the dams quickly enough to deter the looming 2050 crisis.

When you have the means, repair the roof. When you don't, move your bed

Right now, Addis Ababa does not have the means to "repair the roof" by building the Sibilu or Gerbi dams. The city must make tactical adjustments to survive with the water it already has. Until these larger projects are financially viable, the city can adopt the following strategies that focus on immediate efficiency and smarter distribution.

Reducing Non-Revenue Water: Minimize Wastage of Water

Experts measure system efficiency using the Non-Revenue Water (NRW) index, which represents the percentage of water produced but "lost" to leaks or theft before reaching a resident. Addis Ababa's NRW is roughly 41% as of a 2024 report. For a resident, this essentially means that for every ten liters of water the city treats and pumps, four liters never make it to the resident's household.

Stopping this invisible drain is achievable with significantly less funding than building a large dam. Until the planned construction projects get funding, the city can focus on precision tools like Active Leak Detection and pressure management to stabilize the existing network. The city can establish 24-hour service teams and advertise a dedicated hotline, so residents can report pipe bursts the moment they happen so dedicated teams can begin repairing immediately.

Other nations have already proven that these technical strategies can transform a city. Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, pulled off the remarkable feat of slashing its NRW from 72% down to just 6% in under 15 years. Similarly, Manila Water in the Philippines dropped its losses from 63% to roughly 12% by engaging directly with communities to legalize connections and fix leaks fast.

In the context of Addis Ababa, if the city follows the blueprint of these cities and manages to decrease its 41% NRW by just 14%, it is essentially saving an amount of water equivalent to building the Gerbi Dam. The achievement would provide the same volume of water without the need for new land, regional negotiations, or massive trans-regional pipelines. Fixing a leaky pipe does not have the same political glamour as inaugurating a new dam, but it is actually a massive supply strategy hiding in plain sight.

Fit-for-Purpose: Implementing a Dual-Pipe System

Water at the reservoirs in Addis Ababa passes all international cleanliness tests before it enters the city's distribution network, meaning the water is perfectly drinkable at the source. Even though the water leaving the treatment plant is safe, residents are increasingly opting for bottled water instead of drinking straight from the tap. They are right to be cautious because the risk of contamination occurs during transit through aging pipes and intermittent supply schedules. Currently, the city is wasting high-tier, purified water on low-tier needs like watering gardens, flushing toilets, washing vehicles, cleaning streets, and firefighting. While the city will not decrease the quality of the water it produces, it can address this issue by creating a secondary network of pipelines specifically for industrial, construction, and low-tier domestic purposes.

Having two sets of pipes in one house might sound a bit over the top, but it is actually a common move for cities around the world that are running low on water.

In a Dual-Pipe Residential System, the plumbing is split into two before it enters your home:

• Potable Line (Blue Pipes): Leads to your kitchen tap, shower, and bathroom sink. This is the high-quality water from reservoirs like Legedadi that is safe to drink.
• Non-Potable Line (Purple Pipes): Leads only to your toilet tank and your outside garden hose or car-washing tap.

Addis Ababa is actually a perfect spot for this because it has rivers running all through the city. In a lot of ways, this kind of network is already happening, even if it is a bit messy and informal for now. You can actually see it in action at some of the city parks. In the Ayat area, for instance, pumps already pull river water into pipes just to keep the grass green. If the city formalizes this setup and keeps cleaning up the riverbanks through the Riverside Project, it could really take off. That water could then be used for factories, flushing school toilets, or washing cars in big apartment complexes, letting the system grow across the whole city.

Ultimately though, solving the water crisis in Addis Ababa is about more than just waiting for a massive new dam to appear on the horizon. While the large-scale infrastructure projects are the final goal, the city has to survive the here and now by making smarter, tactical choices. Moving toward a system where water is treated as a valuable economic good is a tough shift, but it is the only way to make the utility strong enough to stand on its own feet and attract the investment it needs. Not just that once we deeply understand the issues facing our city, it becomes clear that every resident can be part of the solution. Whether it is conserving water at home or contacting officials to report a broken pipe, these individual efforts ultimately add up. We all have a role in protecting our future, and we just need the willingness to get involved and pick up the already available.

References

• World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report (2024)
• Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA)
• Manila Water Sustainability Report
• World Bank Report: The Challenge of Reducing Non-Revenue Water
• weASPiRE: Addis Ababa's Chronic Urban Water Supply
• World Bank Project Appraisal on Water Sector Reform
• https://www.afdb.org/en/projects-and-operations/p-et-ea0-004
• https://www.scribd.com/document/738826877/New-water-tariff
• https://www.scribd.com/document/527631379/20517-Draft-456-140415