Mapping Water-Accessibility Deficits Across Ethiopia’s Eastern and Southern Drought Belt

Abstract

Located in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia faces recurring cycles of prolonged drought and intense rain, leaving the majority of the population without basic water access. Current planning initiatives often overestimate water coverage by ignoring the spatial distribution, capacity, and functionality of water points. This results in discrepancies between infrastructure placement and population needs. CHIRPS precipitation, FLDAS soil moisture, and WorldPop 2025 population count estimates were each reclassified into five risk levels and mapped within Afar, Oromia, and Somali, three of the most drought-prone regions in Ethiopia. Water points (1517 total) from an mWater dataset were layered onto each map to estimate spatial patterns based on the number of improved and unimproved points in each risk level, though accuracy is limited due to the data’s lack of continuously updated functionality. Calculations demonstrated a strong alignment between infrastructure placement and high precipitation, with 46.8% of improved and 53.9% of unimproved water points located within regions of the wettest level, compared to 4.3% and 0% in the driest level. Conversely, improved water points were distributed more evenly across soil moisture extremes (25.1% in the driest class; 29.6% in the wettest). Additionally, 65.7% of all water points were located in the least populated level (1 to 5 people/100m grid), suggesting a spatial disconnect between current water infrastructure and population demand. These results may help identify access gaps based on where improved water points are relative to regions with drier climates or greater water demand. The next phase of research will combine all four datasets into a final spatial prioritization map using a weighted overlay analysis to further pinpoint water access deficit regions.