The Role of Water Supply and Sanitation in Reducing Poverty

Ethiopia’s water supply and sanitation coverage is one of the lowest in Africa. Such a situation made people in the country to spend much more time collecting drinking water and in addition to this people have been becoming unhealthy due to the spread of water related diseases.In 2004, 83.1 percent and 49.7 percent of urban people got water supply and sanitation respectively. In the same year 31.4 percent rural people obtained water supply when only 3.9 percent of the rural people accessed safe sanitation service.The current Ethiopia Government has been undertaking various measures to expand the provision of water supply and sanitation services throughout the country. During the last five years the sector experienced major changes in terms of receiving higher financial resource allocation, service coverage improvement, new institutional reforms and introduction of new sector program. Such moves help the country to get the benefits that came from the provision of water supply and sanitation. If the government would able to achieve the stated targets of universal provision of water supply and sanitation, the total 23.1 million people would be out of poverty at the end of 2012.