Kenya’s Kyumbi dam will shortly be restored to provide irrigation and drinking water. In order to improve the lives of the people of Kyumbi and the neighbouring regions, the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) initiated the project with the objective of enhancing agricultural, water availability, and weather event resilience.
Rehabilitating these structures is also being done in anticipation of El Niño rains, which can strike Kenya and the Horn of Africa, causing torrential rains, flooding, and crop losses. Such severe weather events can be minimised in impact by restoring these water infrastructure projects.
Dam at Kyumbi, The project will have a 45,000 cubic metre storage capacity and is situated in the Kenyan sub-county of Athi River. In order to offer drinking water for more than 3,000 houses in Kyumbi, an amount of the water taken from the restored reservoir will be treated, helping over 18,000 people in the surrounding area.
In order to help local farmers, the reservoir will also be utilised for providing water for irrigation, potentially covering up to 20 hectares of plantations in Kyumbi. $168,000 in financing is needed for the project. The restoration of 2,000 dams will be financed by this grant, which comes from South Korea. In addition to this project, the Kenyan government plans on building 10,000 tiny dams for small-scale irrigation throughout the nation to improve rural people’ access to food.
