End hunger with sand dams

Global hunger remains one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. Despite the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting a decline in overall world hunger in 2024, parts of Africa and Asia have sadly seen rises during this time. Shockingly, more than 20% of people in Africa faced hunger last year, highlighting the continued scale of this issue for millions of people.

A major cause of worldwide hunger is the prevalence of extreme weather conditions, which are made worse by climate change. Destructive events like floods, droughts and cyclones can ruin crops, destroy livelihoods, and degrade soil, whilst also creating water scarcity by causing unpredictable rainfall patterns and damaging water collection infrastructure.

Particularly in dryland regions around the world, which rely heavily on rain-fed subsistence agriculture and often see the worst effects of climate change, water scarcity is a challenge that affects numerous parts of daily life. Not least among these is the impact it has on people’s ability to grow food on their farms. The sad reality is that not having enough water usually means also not having enough food.

This has been the reality for Lucia Mwikali, a member of the Vinya wa Kitulani community in southeast Kenya. She recounts what life was like before her community had a sand dam

“In the past, farming was a struggle. The land was dry and our crops barely survived. The soil was parched and every planting season was filled with uncertainty. We relied on unpredictable rains and when they failed, our harvests were poor. We grew only what we could – mostly drought-resistant crops – but even those struggled.”

That’s why we at Sand Dams Worldwide are so passionate about supporting farmers like Lucia to achieve food security, so that they no longer have to face hunger and can look forward to their futures. However, we need your support if we are to continue enabling sand dam projects across global drylands.

A sand dam – a reinforced concrete wall built across a seasonal sandy riverbed – can capture up to 40 million litres of water that meets WHO drinking standards, replenishing with every rainy season. They provide a safe water source much closer to people’s homes, reducing reliance on potentially unsafe sources and preventing the need for exhausting journeys to distant water points. This leaves people healthier and happier, with more time and energy to spend on farming and other income-generating activities. Watch here how sand dams work:

Sand dams can be relied on as a year-round water source for all a community’s needs, meaning that people are no longer forced to choose between using water for cooking, cleaning or washing. Crucially, sand dams provide plenty of water for watering crops, ensuring farmers can grow enough produce to feed themselves and their families each year.

By providing training in sustainable agriculture and supplying vital resources, such as drought-resistant seed varieties, sand dam projects help communities to maximise the impact of water from their sand dams. Supporting communities to implement measures like land terracing helps to improve conditions for growing crops by retaining vital topsoil, whilst establishing tree nurseries and seed banks makes a great difference to long term food security.

Sand dams also have a powerful restorative and “re-greening” effect on local land by recharging groundwater levels and raising the water table. By doing so, they allow more water to infiltrate surrounding soil, improving the fertility of degraded land and creating ideal conditions for farming. This is hugely important for communities to build a more sustainable future for their farming livelihoods, as it allows them to achieve better and more reliable crop harvests.

By bringing all these elements together, sand dam projects can effectively end hunger in dryland communities by removing the obstacle of water scarcity whilst equipping people with the knowledge and skills to improve their farming practices. From our own research into communities we have worked with, we found that sand dam projects reduce the proportion of people experiencing a type of food shortage by 89%, whilst they also lead to a 23% reduction in households having to reduce the size of meals.

“Sand dams have greatly transformed my life. They have not only improved our  access to water but have also allowed us to engage in agriculture year-round. We now grow enough food to feed our families and even sell surplus at the market. This has increased our income and made our lives better.”

Joseph Maina, Vinya wa Kitulani self-help group member, southeast Kenya.

You can read for yourself about the impact of sand dam projects in this story from the Vinya wa Kitulani community in southeast Kenya. We very much hope you enjoy reading this story and learning about the impact your support can have on people’s lives.

Here are just a few examples of how your donation could help to contribute towards a sand dam project, helping to end hunger for a dryland community:

• £25 could provide a farmer with drought-resistant seeds, so they can feed and support their family
  
  
• £50 could provide a roll of barbed wire to reinforce a sand dam, anchoring it to the bedrock
  
  
• £150 could provide the equipment and tools to build a tree nursery

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and for your continued support for Sand Dams Worldwide. We would hugely appreciate any amount you could donate towards our work, which would be a valued contribution towards our goal to end hunger with sand dams.