The Ethiopian government is planning to tap into its largely unexploited groundwater resources to sustain its population of over 90 million.

Ethiopia has groundwater storage of 12,700 km³. This is recharged by 36 billion m³ per year thanks to precipitation and other surface water. Government is currently undertaking a survey of groundwater, hoping to cover 22.7% of the total area thought to have underground reserves by 2015.

Ethiopia’s groundwater is currently mainly used by pastoralists in lowland areas where there is a scarcity of surface water. However, the Ministry of Water and Energy plans to increase potable water coverage to 98.5% of households nationwide by the end of next year. To do this it will need new water supplies.

Seifu Kebede, head of the School of Earth Sciences at Addis Ababa University, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, “We live in an age of ever-expanding cities and population centres, and the use of centralised water systems is becoming obsolete, leading to the need for decentralised ones, which groundwater provides.”

Kebede also argues that groundwater could be a potential climate buffer because it has the potential to outlast surface water for some time. It in case of drought, groundwater could sustain the country. He further believes that groundwater could be used to ease the perennial water tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt and Sudan.