Visit the newly constructed rainwater harvesting tank
In February 2011 Isaac Kariuki, the rainwater harvesting expert from Kenya came back to Epyeshona village. His mission was to improve the vegetable gardens in Epyeshona and to construct another rainwater harvesting tank for the primary school in Okatana. The tank will provide the school children in Okatana with 30.000 litres of rainwater each year for their school garden. All these works, such as brick laying and installation of drip irrigation are done together with the team from Epyeshona.
The team from Epyeshona will also be trained in wise gardening and get theoretical knowledge on project management. Together with the people from Epyeshona the project CuveWaters has already successfully implemented four types of rainwater harvesting tanks in their village (close to Okatana).
Since then, people from Epyeshona can collect the rainfall from their roofs to store it, especially for the dry season. Three single household tanks with 30.000 litres storage capacity each and one community water tank with a storage capacity of 120.000 litres were built by the community under the guidance of experts from Kenya and Germany.
In 2010 Gardens were planted next to the tanks, together with the agricultural extension officers, and the first successful harvest took place in October 2010. The collected water is mainly used for growing spinach, tomatoes and pumpkins. In this way gardening offers the possibility for the people of central-northern Namibia to improve their diet and to generate income.
The newly constructed rainwater harvesting tank at Okatana primary school and the new greenhouse in Epyeshona can be visited on the 10th of March 2011.
For further information please contact Patrick Rickert (Namibia) 081 2398990
Project background
CuveWaters is a Namibian-German joint research for development project on integrated water resources management (IWRM) in the Cuvelai-Etosha Basin (CEB), working in close cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry.
We develop and implement IWRM in a way which is tailor made for CEB. The central goal is to strengthen the potential of the region’s resources with new and adapted technologies for efficient water supply. The implemented technologies include pilot plants for rainwater harvesting, groundwater desalination, sanitation and water re-use, and subsurface water storage.
The Institute for social-ecological research (ISOE) is leading the CuveWaters project, together with the Institute IWAR of the Technical University in Darmstadt as a research partner. Both institutions are situated in Germany. In Namibia we work in close cooperation with the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN).