10th International Rainwater Catchment Systems Conference
"Rainwater International 2001"
Mannheim, Germany - September 2001

Section 2: Rainwater Catchment in Humid and Arid Regions

Paper 2.21

Introduction of Rainwater Harvesting Technology in a Rural Community in Nigeria

Kazanka Comfort
Fantsuam Foundation
Nigeria
email: fantsuamfoundation@fantsuam.com

The annual drought in the northern parts of Nigeria has been accepted as inevitable, and rural communities are generally resigned to their fate in this season because they belie there is nothing that can be done about it. The brunt of the drought is borne by women and children who have to make dawn trips to the nearest river in search of water for domestic use because the wells and near-by streams have gone dry.

The introduction of Rainwater Harvesting in one of the communities where Fantsuam Foundation serves was greeted with surprise - the whole scheme seems so logical we all wondered why we had never thought of it before. After the novelty of the idea has become more generally accepted and widely discussed, the technical details needed to be understood and put to work. Financing the cost of materials and labour required for the water storage became a challenge for the community. This poster presents the outcome of the innovative use of microcredit loan to the community for financing a pilot project for harvesting rainwater

PDF of full document available to members (2pp, 12kb)