In Somaliland, water offers a lifeline for communities devastated by drought
The worst drought in decades continues
Ainabo, Somaliland: On this windy and unusually chilly morning, Safia Abdi Ahmed (40) ambles towards the water point, yellow jerrycan in hand with her son and niece tagging along.
Safia is new here, having fled her home in Ceel Aal because of the drought two months earlier. She travelled for six days with her husband and 10 children and eventually settled in this village because it offered the one thing they craved for – water.
“We had no water and rain for a long time,” she says. “The drought killed our livestock. Some died on the way here. The few that survived are very weak. It’s the worst I have seen since 2017. I am not going back there, there is nothing left.”
Four consecutive seasons of failed rains, with potentially a fifth predicted for later this year, have affected nearly 20 million people across the Horn of Africa, with millions forced to flee their homes in search of food, water, and pasture. In Somaliland, over 350,000 people are in need of urgent water supply.
The scarcity of water is at the heart of the crisis. Natural sources of safe water such as open wells and ponds have dried up and water prices have escalated, in some places by as much as 85 per cent. Families are forced to leave everything behind and trek for days and weeks in a desperate search for water. Others are forced to drink contaminated water, exposing them to water-borne diseases like diarrhea and cholera.
The area where Safia and her family have settled has a solar-powered borehole that was installed by UNICEF in January 2022 with funding from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. The borehole is expected to benefit approximately 3,000 people.
“I worry a lot about my children being hungry,” she says. “Many people here are destitute. They have lost all their livestock and can no longer afford a meal.”
Safia says she had managed to save a third of her 150 goats. Worryingly, however, rains that had fallen the previous couple of days, had killed five goat kids, possibly from hypothermia.
Safia also worries about the disruption to her children’s education.
“The children have no school to study in and it is same for both the host community and the displaced people,” she says. “Previously, we used to send our children to a nearby small town which had a school. But since we moved here two months ago, they don’t go to school. We need help during these times of the drought; we also need education for our children.”