Tag Archives: Addis Ababa

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Water an afterthought in dash to cash in on Ethiopian markets

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

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I ran across an article titled “Coming Soon to Ethiopia: Heineken and KFC?” a few days ago through Mashable via Businessweek. The article highlights Heineken’s entry into the Ethiopian market through the purchase of 2 local beer company and development of a large Heineken brewery on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, near Ambo. The article goes on to note that other multinational companies such as Yum Corporation are exploring expansion into Ethiopia.

The story of Heineken, which is not breaking news by any means since has been in development for the last few years, is of concern nonetheless. In the frenzy to attract direct foreign investment, basic questions related to availability of resources- water namely have been absent from national discourse. The location of Heineken’s new brewery is in direct competition for water resources, mostly groundwater, with other industries such as Ambo Sparkling water as well as domestic water supply sources for Addis Ababa and commercial agriculture in the area.

The entry of Heineken into Ethiopia has been received with mixed emotions and has been mostly scrutinized from financial and economic viability angles. Very few have questioned that this brewery that will require large quantities of water, a finite resource in the area. Although Ethiopia has been endowed with plentiful water resources, the Ambo area, which falls in the Awash River Basin, heavily relies on groundwater sources. The city of Addis Ababa also relies on the same groundwater sources for domestic water supply. Both Addis Ababa and Ambo, which are geographically located in the Great Rift Valley, sit on stratified groundwater aquifers. Due to complex geology and expense to carry out technical studies,  limited information is known about the characteristics of these aquifers and available water resources. To meet domestic water supply demands, wells are being dug deeper and deeper, adding to the cost of new water source development and increasing the cost of operation of maintenance due to the use of pumps to retrieve water from deep wells.

As water demanding industries such as breweries expand in the area, Addis Ababa and its surrounding communities face increased risk of land subsidence, as well as complications to already strained domestic water supplies. So with the introduction of Heineken in stores and bars across Addis Ababa, beer maybe plentiful in the coming months, drinking water in the coming years may not.

Businesses such as Heineken, need not take availability of water resources for granted, given that they must share this resource with many other sectors. Also, given the scale of investments going into these breweries, detailed groundwater investigations that can shed light on groundwater sources and better inform water resources planning are a cheap investment for private sector and a public service to Ministry of Water and Energy.

Given that the scale of this problem will be exasperated in coming years, as the population of Addis Ababa mushrooms and industries in the area grow, I hope that much greater consideration for water resources and implications of overdraft are considered more seriously.

Around Addis: public transport

03 Friday Jun 2011

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I  have a love-hate relationship with the distinctive blue and white mini-van public transport taxis in Addis. They run along various predetermined routes….or at least they are supposed to. But like everyone trying to make a little more money, the drivers’ routes deviate from time to time. As a new arrival to Ethiopia, not knowing the city, the language or any other person to depend on, to occupy my time on weekends, I took these taxis around everywhere to get to major markets around town. My first visits to Merkato as well as Shiro Meda was through the use of string of these taxis. It was novel, cheap and I got to see more of the city. Through sign language and bits of English from taxi users, I got directions on where to get off and which taxis to take to certain places. One of my more memorable taxi stop conversations, with a lovely older lady was etiquette of taking these taxis. She began to give me words of advice when she realized I was not Ethiopian and new the city. She told me the most useful word I would need on these taxis is…’waraja’ (I took it to mean stop (here))”

But that love has certainly weaned off. As the occasional pedestrian and a fellow driver along the roads of Addis, these taxis are a true menace at times. Their snaking around lanes, abrupt stops and the tendency to cut you off are somewhat annoying. There is little regard for the common pedestrian. Although in defense of taxi drivers pedestrians here are something else (at times believing that they too have licence plates attached to their front and back).

As the taxis come to an abrupt stop you find a young boy/man shouting the names of the last stop. Their rapid and peculiar way of shouting out names of boroughs around the cities needs a trained ear. For a first timer, as I once was, it was difficult to distinguish what they were saying and where they were going.

Today in an effort to regulate taxis the government has imposed  predesignated routes and instructed all taxis to place signs over head. Unfortunately all the signs are in Amharic. From my Ethiopian friends, I gather that even those who can read them have had difficulty understanding the final destination as the written names don’t correspond to names of stops previously belted out.

 

Love them or hate them, these taxis are probably the preferred form of transport around Addis and the most abundant. Many times there aren’t enough and you find people piling up in hoards waiting for the a seat in any taxi headed in their desired direction. One thing is for sure, they definitely keep me as a driver on my toe…because you never know what to expect from them.