Assessment of water harvesting in Sudan
Improving the Efficiency and Sustainability of Water Harvesting Technologies in Sudan
Sudan faces extreme climate variability, recurrent droughts, high evaporation rates, and growing pressure on water resources, compounded by prolonged conflict and large-scale displacement. In many regions, water harvesting systems are essential for drinking water, livestock, and rain-fed agriculture, yet their effectiveness, sustainability, and suitability vary widely across climatic and socio-political contexts.
Through this technical assistance, implemented under the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN), AidEnvironment, in partnership with RICOS Consulting, assesses existing water harvesting technologies across Sudan. The project analyses their hydrological performance, environmental sustainability, social appropriateness, and operational robustness under conditions of climate stress and conflict.
The assignment focuses on identifying strengths, limitations, and capacity gaps related to water harvesting practices, while diagnosing which technologies are most suitable for Sudan’s diverse agro-ecological zones. Special attention is given to low-maintenance, conflict-resilient solutions that minimise evaporation losses, reduce downstream impacts, and remain functional when institutional capacity is limited.
Key outputs include a structured assessment of existing technologies, a catalogue of appropriate and innovative water harvesting solutions, recommendations for improving design manuals and operational guidelines, and targeted capacity-building pathways for government institutions, NGOs, engineers, and researchers. Together, these outputs aim to strengthen Sudan’s adaptive capacity to climate change and support more resilient, context-appropriate water management strategies.
This project was carried out in the middle of an ongoing and escalating conflict in Sudan. Throughout much of the assignment, insecurity, access restrictions, and rapidly changing conditions made on-the-ground work difficult and, at times, impossible. Travel was limited, meetings were hard to organize, and even basic data collection required constant adaptation.
At the same time, climate pressures continued to intensify. Erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and very high evaporation rates place growing strain on water harvesting systems that many communities depend on for drinking water, livestock, and agriculture. Existing solutions, often based on standardized designs—frequently perform poorly under these conditions and require levels of operation, maintenance, and institutional support that are unrealistic in conflict-affected areas.
Given these realities, the project deliberately took a flexible and pragmatic approach. Rather than relying on extensive field campaigns, the team worked through trusted local partners, remote collaboration, expert interviews, and available data to assess how different water harvesting technologies perform in Sudan’s diverse and fragile contexts.
The assessment focused on what matters most in practice: whether systems continue to function during periods of insecurity, how vulnerable they are to evaporation and breakdown, who can realistically operate and maintain them, and how they affect other water users. Importantly, the project looked not only at successful examples, but also at systems that failed or were abandoned, using these experiences as a source of learning.
Despite the difficult conditions, the team was able to design and implement a pilot water harvesting intervention, showing that carefully chosen, low-complexity solutions can still be delivered even under severe constraints.
