The Budekwa area in Tanzania long suffered from a critical shortage of water. In January 2008 when the project began only 18% of households had access to safe and clean water. AuCom funded a project in a joint effort with World Vision, the Government of Tanzania, the local District Council, and the people of Budekwa to provide safe water to 1,373 households.
The Budekwa Area Development Programme (ADP) is situated in Mwagala Division, Maswa District in Tanzania’s Shinyanga Region. Its eight villages cover an area of 345km2 and have a total population of over 26,350 people.
In this culture, the women or girls collect water, which may take over 2 hours. This puts pressure on schooling and household tasks each day. The average household of 6 people requires 10 litres per person per day, but most can only collect 40 litres a day.
The Tanzanian government aims to ensure every household has access to water with a maximum distance of 400m. To quote the Tanzanian Poverty Reductions Strategy “The contribution of the water sector to poverty reduction is through reduction of time spent in fetching water, improved health standards, creating a conducive environment for increasing school attendance and increased opportunity for social economic activities.
Started in January 2008, the project supported by AuCom constructed protected shallow wells to a depth of 10-20m to reduce water collection time to less than 30 minutes across the area. Now these wells serve 1,550 households. A local person has been trained as a pump technician for each well, and the seven village water committees have established water by-laws in order to ensure long-term sustainability of the wells.