The Uganda Rural Water Development Project is a proposal by Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) in partnership with M/S Hydro Nova Ltd (HN). The proposal is for the development of a new sustainable underground water supply network targeting water stressed parts of the country. The project will deliver volumes of fresh water from a wide network of large diameter high yield wells with distributed piping systems and kiosks to rural areas country wide.

Uganda’s current population is approximately 42 million people. 82.6% (33.3 million) of this population live in rural areas. Based on MWE’s data, 37.5% of the rural population (15.1 million people) have no access to a safe source of water. In most of these areas, domestic water is derived from traditional wells and boreholes that are relatively shallow and yield small volumes of water. These water sources are also considered generally unsafe.

An economic study conducted by the World Bank for Uganda showed that the impact of poor access to water and sanitation costs Uganda’s economy approximately US$ 233M (UGX 380B) per year.  The project is therefore justified by the need to provide sustainable amounts of safe water for domestic use in areas that are traditionally water stressed.

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