Currently AAWSA is providing 677,000 cubic meters of water daily to some 4.9 million inhabitants of the capital Addis Ababa and its visitors, according to Fekadu Zeleke, Deputy manager of Water department at AAWSA.
The Gerbi $150 million project, which will supply an additional 80,000 cubic meters of water is being implemented, while another project with the capacity of supplying 173,000 cubic meters of water will be implemented over the coming three years, according to Eng. Fekadu, who briefed editors from various media outlets at Legedadi water treatment station.
Because of the shortage of water, the inhabitants of Addis Ababa are currently getting on average two to three times per week. AAWSA currently supply 69% of the water from ground water while the remaining comes from three dams. It is stated that as the topography of Addis Ababa is challenging for distribution of water, AAWSA is using 44 main pumping stations to reach inhabitants in different corners of the city using some 8 kilometers of pipelines.
Even though the Authority has various projects that can increase the water supply of the city, it has not been able to deliver on time mainly because of lack of investment and hard currency shortages. Multilateral organizations like the World Bank have been among the major financier of Addis Ababa City’s water projects, while the government has also been allocating significant capital budget, according to Eng. Zerihun Abate, General Manager of AAWSA, who is optimistic about the future and AAWSA’s plans of meeting the growing demand of the dynamic political capital of Africa.
In addition to supplying water to the City, AAWSA is also mandated to issue and renew licenses for commercial companies such as, real estates and hotels to develop ground water and use. There are currently 200 companies in the city licensed to develop and use ground water.
In addition to financing shortage for implementation of new water projects, AAWSA has also been facing power outages, that makes its water distribution difficult and costly by increasing its cost for fuel to run its 130 generators, according to Eng. Fekadu, who stated that 327,000 liters of fuel was used to run the generators in six months period because of the power outage.
It is also stated that Ethiopian Airlines, the water consumption of which has recently doubled from 2,000 cubic meters per days to 4,000 cubic meters are among the major commercial companies using about half of the water AAWSA supplies to the Addis Ababa. The World Water Day will be commemorated this week on March 22, 2025 with a theme of “Glacier Preservation”.
