Eritrea’s Village Dams Turn the Tide on Drought, Boost Food Security and Rural Livelihoods

Many of these dams are masonry structures—relying on the strength of locally quarried stone—designed to hold tens of thousands of cubic meters of water.

 

Across Eritrea’s sun-baked interior, a quiet revolution is unfolding. Where parched riverbeds once marked the struggle for survival, hand-built masonry dams now hold back precious rainwater, feeding canals and irrigating crops even during the harshest dry spells. For one of the Horn of Africa’s most drought-prone countries, these modest dams have become pillars of hope—delivering not just water, but renewed food security, income, and resilience to rural communities.

Tackling Drought with Local Solutions

Eritrea, long defined by its arid climate and unpredictable rainfall, has pioneered a simple but transformative response to water scarcity: building small- and medium-sized dams using local materials and community labour. Supported by technical expertise and concessional funding from the African Development Bank (AfDB), Eritrea has now constructed or rehabilitated over 880 dams, most of them in rural or underserved areas.

Many of these dams are masonry structures—relying on the strength of locally quarried stone—designed to hold tens of thousands of cubic meters of water. “The real secret has been involving the community every step of the way,” says Kenneth Onyango, Chief Country Program Officer at the AfDB’s Eritrea liaison office. “People feel true ownership over the projects, which is why we’re seeing results so quickly and at such scale.”

Turning Scarcity into Opportunity

For families like Bekit Idris’s in Guritatal, central Eritrea, the change has been life-altering. “Our crops depended on the rain, and the rains had become erratic and unevenly distributed,” Idris recalls. Before the dam’s arrival, a single harvest barely fed his family. Today, water released from the community dam supports three bountiful harvests a year: cereals, vegetables, fruit, and even green fodder for livestock.

“I am now harvesting three times a year, as opposed to only once before,” Idris explains. “Now I produce enough not only to feed my family, but also to sell in the market. This has greatly improved both our nutrition and household income.”

African Development Bank’s Drought Resilience Programme

Since 2015, Eritrea’s water strategy has been turbocharged by the AfDB’s Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (DRSLP). In its fifth phase and scheduled to run until December 2026, the project has already:

• Built 98 new small and medium dams (with a final target of 116 masonry dams)

• Rehabilitated over 200 hectares of degraded land

• Constructed 11 water points to serve both people and livestock

• Promoted soil and water conservation across 9,800 hectares upstream of the dams

These efforts have expanded reliable irrigation to new communities, lifting them from risky subsistence farming to more commercial and sustainable practices.

Growing Skills and Agribusiness

The project’s impact extends beyond water and crops. New training and entrepreneurship programmes have equipped local farmers with business skills and modern agricultural techniques. Farmers now receive improved seeds and other inputs, boosting productivity and supporting value-chain development. “The communities are seeing results, and we see the livelihood changes evidenced by a wider adoption of agriculture as a source of income for many households in the targeted communities,” Onyango notes.

From Desperation to Demonstration: Stories from the Field

In Eritrea’s northern region, farmer Hamed Meskel once watched his shallow wells run dry and his crops wither. The arrival of the Aderde dam changed everything. “Things were slowly getting worse as the wells dried,” Meskel said. “I was forced to stop cultivating crops, but I have resumed. Because of the construction of this dam, water is now available.”

Today, Meskel’s demonstration farm, with biannual harvests and a 30% increase in yields per unit area, serves as a learning hub for 350 neighbouring families.

Building Community, Building Resilience

The importance of these efforts is hard to overstate in Eritrea, where roughly 73% of people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As DRSLP Project Coordinator Hadgu Gebrendrias highlights, “The construction of the 98 masonry dams has encouraged the development of new soil and water conservation structures in all of Eritrea’s six regions over the last five years.”

The project is not just improving food and nutrition security—especially for pastoral and agro-pastoral communities—it’s fostering a sense of hope, collective achievement, and security against a changing climate.

Looking Ahead: Lasting Change, Rooted in Community

The Eritrean government, in partnership with the AfDB and local stakeholders, has signalled its determination to continue building on these successes. Community participation, technical support, and targeted investment will remain at the heart of efforts to expand drought resilience, sustainable agriculture, and rural prosperity.

As more villages see their rivers dammed and their fields greening, a new future is taking shape—one where Eritrea’s most vulnerable are not just surviving, but thriving.