As Sand Dams Worldwide looks to enable sand dam technology in new countries, we share how we have been taking steps to do so with a new partner in Tanzania.

It’s an exciting time at Sand Dams Worldwide as we look to scale up our work with new partners and in new countries, as described in Our Strategy to 2025. In May (2019) we visited Tanzania with our strategic partners, the Africa Sand Dam Foundation (ASDF), to meet with a new partner and conduct a feasibility study of the potential for sand dams in Dodoma, central Tanzania. We spent a week with Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania in the Dodoma region and were also accompanied by staff from the Dodoma regional government.

During this week we visited 13 villages in two districts; the Chimwina and Mpwapwa districts. These districts are very dry with people often spending at least six hours collecting water, including several hours queuing at the water source. In some cases, water scarcity is so great and distances so far that people are only able to collect water every other day.

This visit confirmed that this area is very suitable for sand dams, which could provide a much-needed sustainable supply of safe water for these communities and help them to transform their own lives. During the week we visited 15 different rivers and found 17 good sites, as well as taking the measurements needed to draw up the sand dam designs.

We are now in the final stages of agreeing the detailed project plans and budgets to enable us to start raising funds for this exciting new programme and we hope to start building sand dams in Tanzania in early 2020.

Sand dams enable rural dryland farmers to transform their own lives, reducing the time and effort spent on collecting water so that communities can focus on developing sustainable futures. Please donate to help more rural people invest in their own livelihoods, and become self-sustaining for generations to come.