Millet is the main nutrition for peasant
families in North Darfur. About 90% of
the labour force working in the millet
fields is female. Fetching water is also
the responsibility of women, mainly
young girls, and it is one of the hardest
tasks to perform, with long distances to
travel in order to find water. Their most
likely destinations are wadis, which
sometimes form a source of subsurface
water. Women usually dig shallow wells
on wadi beds, locally known as ‘tumad’,
that reach about 50cm to 1m in depth.
As wadi land becomes more valuable,
the richer people are trying to acquire as
much of it as possible. This means that
poor farmers are often denied access
to wadis and are forced to depend on
‘goz’– sandy soils – in spite of their low
productivity. The severity of the water
shortage has led village chiefs to take
preventative measures that will limit
ownership of wadi land by the wealthy
few.
III. CURRENT PROJECTS
ITDG Sudan has five projects in
the Darfur area that focus on water
retention and harvesting.
Community Participation:
ITDG has considered the scope for
beneficiary participation in each
project, throughout the project cycle.
Community members have been
involved in planning, implementation,
monitoring and evaluation. In particular,
local knowledge has provided
information regarding the history
This situation shows that efforts are
being made to reclaim more wadi lands
for use by more people, especially poor
farmers. Methods of reclaiming such
lands are many, but the most effective
one is through building earth dams and
terraces to catch more water for direct
and flood irrigation.
ITDG Sudan’s efforts in this field are
concentrated on training farmers in
water harvesting techniques. These are
mainly building terraces on wadi beds
and building dam structures supported
by earth embankments to catch as much
water as possible for both domestic use
and irrigation.
The purpose of this document is to focus
on ITDG’s experience in building dams
and earth embankments, and to show
the impact of these methods on people’s
livelihoods and on the environment.
of flooding and watercourses which
helps technicians design the maximum
possible storage capacity based on the
highest experienced floods in each area.
Communities have also participated
by providing local materials and non-
skilled labour.
Community Training
The communities at all sites have been
trained in the management of the dams
in terms of opening and closing the
gates, cleaning the silt, undertaking
necessary maintenance, and assessing
potential damage.
PRACTICAL ANSWERS
TO POVERTY
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