info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
Image from CarKibanda
Ethiopia is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, and its ambitious plan is to become a middle-income country by 2025 by taking a green and sustainable development path. In the process, urban residents are growing and food production faces a series of challenges. Accelerating urban road construction and effectively improving road capacity will be an important project for Ethiopian people's livelihood.
In 1997, the total road network in Ethiopia was 26,550 kilometers. By 2014 it reached 99,522 km. For the country to reach its ambitious growth targets it's aiming to double this to over 200,000 km by 2020.
But new roads in Ethiopia and across sub-Saharan Africa often change the landscape, bringing dust, flooding and erosion. The impact is felt most by rural communities. Roads can negatively affect water flows to wetlands, block fish movements and cause landslides, as well as impact the livelihoods of millions of people.
There is a solution: an approach to road building developed by Dutch social enterprise MetaMeta shows that it's possible to reduce the impact of new roads and support food production by harvesting excess water.
Under a project rolled out in Ethiopia as well as nine other countries including Bangladesh, roads are being built using innovative designs and drainage structures to collect water caused by flooding. This has solved an infrastructural issue while conserving water that can be used for crops and to feed livestock.
For example, roads can route water to storage ponds or underground aquifers. Road drifts can help to retain water in dry riverbeds, and ensure systematic spreading of floodwaters.
By harvesting rainwater, communities living near road networks can increase their resilience to shocks such as floods and droughts.
Roads in EthiopiaThese smart roads are increasing resilience to shocks, such as floods because water is being harvested and maintenance costs are reduced. They are also driving down the cost of road construction through, for example, the reuse of borrow pits for permanent water storage rather than requiring them to be backfilled. This is a considerable cost saving measure and additionally creates a local water resource.
