Review: Groundwater resource potential and status of groundwater resource development in Ethiopia

Abstract

The groundwater resources potential of Ethiopia is estimated to be about 40 billion cubic meters. Groundwater has been used as the main source of water supply since the 1970s for the main cities, towns and dispersed rural communities across the country, where provision of reticulated surface-water schemes is often expensive because of initial project construction costs and poor water quality. The exponential growth of the urban population and agriculture-led industrial development have resulted in greater attention to groundwater as the potentially cost-effective water supply source. As part of the growing focus on the use of groundwater, the Ethiopian government is currently implementing irrigation projects. One plan involves nine irrigation projects covering an estimated area of 8,000 ha, being developed on a pilot scale, with 9,000 test wells, 28,000 monitoring wells and 14,657 spring improvements. If this unprecedented Ethiopian groundwater-centred development plan is implemented successfully at such a scale, it is highly likely that its success will persuade other Sub-Saharan developing nations to put in place the necessary policies, regulations and investment for infrastructure and capacity development for exploring, exploiting and managing their groundwater resources.

Challenges and Prospects of Advancing Groundwater Research in Ethiopian Aquifers: A Review

“…Though Ethiopia has much spatiotemporal distribution and rate of groundwater potential [34,35], there is no agreement on quantitative representation. Various stakeholders [36][37][38] argued that hydrological features are critical for predicting spatial and temporal variability. Weather variability significantly affects hydrological cycles and water policy provision in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia [39].…”

“…Although there is little research on potential groundwater assessment in Ethiopia, some has been done in recent studies [35,38,[57][58][59][60]. The variation of groundwater in the country varies, as observed in different studies, for example, from 2.5 to 6.5 [35,57], 30 [60], 36 [15], 40 [38], and 47 [61] in billion cubic meters (BCM), which can be either an underestimation or overestimation. This vagueness in figures can hinder the pursuit from exploiting its water resources to the limit.…”

Water Resource Assessment of a Complex Volcanic System Under Semi-Arid Climate Using Numerical Modeling: The Borena Basin in Southern Ethiopia

“…The climate is quite diversified due to its equatorial positioning and varied topography, with high inter and intra-annual rainfall variability [3][4][5]. Rainfall ranges from less than 200 mm/year in the eastern, south-eastern and north-eastern arid areas of the country, up to 2500 mm/year in the western highlands [6,7].…”

“…The groundwater resource potential at the country scale is not clearly known. Some estimates [6,7,9,11] set the order of magnitude of the average annual recharge at around 40 × 10 9 m 3 . This figure is an indicator of the importance of this resource.…”

“…At present, groundwater resource is widely used in the country to supply drinking water to municipalities and in various economic sectors, in particular for irrigation. It provides, for example, roughly 40% of drinking water [7] for larges cities, including the capital Addis Ababa, with a population close to 4 million [1]. Groundwater resources are being exploited at an accelerating pace in Ethiopia [10], as elsewhere in the world, due to lower vulnerability to pollution and aquifer properties that are able to buffer the impact of external global changes (increase or decrease in rainfall, drought, flooding, etc.).…”