PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management (Drilling Boreholes in Northern Kenya)

Project Management (Drilling Boreholes in Northern Kenya)

This report is an attempt at a comparative evaluation of different sorts of drought mitigation interventions in the pastoral livestock sector, based primarily on interventions that were attempted in Northern Kenya during the drought of 1999-2001.

A number of small agencies solicited funds for destocking in northern Kenya during the 1999-2001 droughts. There is little likelihood of either donor or domestic funds being available in Kenya for intervention on this scale, but the environmental implications of maintaining herd numbers through drought, and selective procedures to mitigate them, must be borne in mind.

A related set of interventions which has been discussed in Kenya is that of cow-calf camps and drought-time use of commercial ranches by pastoralists. These options are reviewed by Heath (2001).

Water provision

Assistance with the provision of water for humans and livestock includes borehole maintenance as well as the drilling of emergency and contingency boreholes. An example is given by the drilling of the emergency borehole at Harakhotkhot in Wajir in 2000 by Oxfam. The emergency borehole enabled fifty families, previously using another borehole 70 km away, to water their animals locally. Estimated reduced mortality from the reduction in watering stress was valued at $US 64,300, compared to a construction cost of the borehole of $US 38,000. This does not take into account considerable additional benefits, including reduced animal mortality in later years, and reduction in women's time spent fetching domestic water (Oxfam 2002). Provision of boreholes approximates to a public good.

Borehole repair and maintenance shows similar positive returns. Analysis of borehole maintenance in Wajir suggests that each unit of Ksh 1 million ($US 13,300) spent on maintenance or rapid repair of a particular borehole will be justified if it substantially reduces the risk that 125 cattle (estimated price Ksh 8,000 each), or 1,250 sheep or goats (estimated price Ksh 800 each), or some combination of these, will die following borehole failure (Oxfam 2002). Given that in a drought the average borehole is serving several thousand cattle and several tens of thousands of sheep and goats, these are plausible assumptions. As before, this ignores further benefits to women in terms of reduced time spent collecting domestic water. Borehole repairs and maintenance may be considered a private good. If so, micro-finance products could be designed to allow pastoralists to contribute to the cost.

In addition to saving animal lives, secure water provision can reduce labour time spent watering animals and walking animals between water and pasture, as well as increasing the quality of pasture available. We were unable to find examples to quantify this. These are private goods.

Emergency water interventions such as borehole maintenance and repair, contingency borehole drilling, and water tankering have a further important benefit in terms of women's time spent fetching domestic water. In conditions of water shortage, women spend many hours each day collecting water, with negative consequences for their own health, income earning opportunities, household survival and child ...