Developing low-cost household water supply options: the potential of self supply in Ethiopia

Ethiopia has launched a Universal Access Plan (UAP) to achieve safe water supply and sanitation for the country’s 77 million people by 2012. This would mean providing safe water service to 50.9 million new users in just 7 years. The government recently reviewed the progress of UAP and concluded that it would be challenging to achieve its targets with the existing implementation approach. The review strongly recommended that lowcost options need to be pursued to accelerate progress. Self Supply is proposed to be one such approach, providing safe water supply to households without external subsidy. This paper briefly discusses the practice and potential of Self Supply approach; and proposes key next steps needed to help achieve the UAP target for safe water supply in Ethiopia.