DAR ES SALAAM: THE Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) has come up with a research aimed at scaling up the already existing initiatives for enabling availability of water in areas vulnerable to drought.
The action or implementation research, titled; Scaling Innovation for Reduction and Redistribution of Unpaid Care Work for Women and Girls’, also meant to reduce unpaid care work among women and children, who spend much time fetching water.
Speaking during the research inception workshop in Dar es Salaam yesterday, ESRF’s Executive Director Prof Fortunata Makene said the survey looked at innovations, which preserve rainwater and in turn reduce unpaid care work for women and children.
To start with, Prof Makene said they managed to raise funds to conduct the study in Kishapu District, where they found a successful initiative done by the Relief to Development Society (REDESO) organization to support villagers in three villages to access clean water from harvested rainwater.
The initiative was realized with the idea that during the dry season, the villagers in Kishapu spend even 12 hours searching for water.
“Through our action research project, we want to scale up this initiative in Kishapu so that it covers more villages and benefits more households. We scale up this successful communal rainwater harvesting system that was tested in three villages in Kishapu, District, Shinyanga Region,” Prof Makene stated.
She explained that the threeyear project would expand it so that it benefits 240 households in five villages, up from only 30 households currently.
The research, funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is expected to add value to the government’s efforts of increasing water availability in rural areas as well as supporting President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s initiative of relieving women from the burden of carrying buckets of water on their heads.
Also read: NAVIGATING FISCAL WATERS: Current budget implications for 2024/2025 financial year
“When you reduce time they spend fetching water meaning that you have relieved them from carrying buckets of water on their heads, hence, and instead that would enable them to participate in economic activities,” she stressed.
The expected interventions are to improve income generating activities (formal employment skills), to tap into rain water harvesting (rooftop rainwater harvest system), and training on entrepreneurship.
REDESO’s Chief Executive Officer Abeid Kasaize said in the partnership with ESRC, his organisation would focus on technology to harvest rooftop rain water and drilling water wells to help women. It would also construct underground water tanks to collect water from the rooftops of their buildings.
“The little rain that they receive…we want to take advantage of it so that they use it at home. This would reduce the unpaid care work so that the time used in fetching water could be used in income generating activities.
So, we look forward to scaling up this technology to a larger one so that more villages could get water,” Mr Kasaize pointed out.
On her part, Dr Flora Myamba, Executive Director of the Women and Social Protection (WSP) organisation, which is also a research partner, said they would be providing training on entrepreneurship skills.
“This entrepreneurship skills gained would enable women to use the time they had saved from reduced care work to engage in income generating activities,” Dr Myamba argued.
