A brief review of groundwater for rural water supply in sub-Saharan Africa

"Co-ordinated groundwater research and data collection has become more difficult in SSA due to decentralisation and demand responsive approaches to the provision of rural water supplies. Information is rarely collected from the many thousands of boreholes drilled each year, with the result that the same costly mistakes are made time and again. However techniques are available to allow local institutions to collect high value data from ongoing drilling for little additional cost. The use of these techniques could allow local institutions to assess the nature of groundwater resources in their areas and, with proper documentation and networking, increase the knowledge base of groundwater in Africa. Budgets for groundwater research in Africa could then be targeted to issues that cannot be addressed by improved data collection from ongoing drilling. Such a scenario will only occur with the dissemination of simple techniques in groundwater resource assessment to those involved in rural water supply, and when the benefits of such assessments are seen within individual water projects."

Attachment	Size
ABriefReviewGroundwater.pdf	2.25 MB

Simple methods for assessing GW resources in low permeability areas of Africa

"This manual aims to be a first step in providing useful information for project engineers working on rural water supply projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The focus is on low permeability aquifers, where groundwater is difficult to find."