Environmental flow assessment and implications on sustainability of aquatic ecosystems in Ethiopia: A literature review on global and national evidences

As part of water resources management policy, water resources projects undertake environmental flow assessments (EFA) to determine how much water should be maintained or released to the downstream part of rivers to protect the health of aquatic and riparian ecosystems and societal wellbeing. In Ethiopia, EFA is being undertaken mostly in...

Housing Innovation and the Global Foreign Aid Agenda in Addis Ababa (1964-1993)

Since the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, housing has often been part of the foreign aid agenda of international agencies and non-governmental organisations. Housing concepts included in the development aid “packages” were often used to introduce new political ideas and economic paradigms that would affect dramatically the livelihoods of the...

Hydrological foundation as a basis for a holistic environmental flow assessment of tropical highland rivers in ethiopia

The sustainable development of water resources includes retaining some amount of the natural flow regime in water bodies to protect and maintain aquatic ecosystem health and the human livelihoods and wellbeing dependent upon them. Although assessment of environmental flows is now occurring globally, limited studies have been carried out in...

The Political Morphology of Drainage—How Gully Formation Links to State Formation in the Choke Mountains of Ethiopia

To understand why soil erosion is persistent despite three decades of massive investments in soil conservation, this paper explores how drainage and soil conservation change a hill slope in the Choke Mountains. By paying close attention to the practices that reshape the hill, we account for the active roles of people and material flows in...

The Development of an Energy Efficient Electric Mitad for Baking Injeras in Ethiopia

Preparation of Injera, the cultural staple bread food<br/>item in Ethiopia, is known for its intensive energy consuming<br/>cooking. Baking this food item in the traditional three stone stoves,<br/>with an efficiency of 5-15%, consumes huge amounts of firewood<br/>and causes consequent problems like deforestation, global warming<br/>and...

Assessing the costs and benefits of improved land management practices in three watershed areas in Ethiopia

Unsustainable land use management and the resulting soil erosion are among the most pervasive problems in rural Ethiopia, where most of the country's people live, jeopardizing food security. Despite various efforts to introduce soil conservation measures and assess their costs and benefits, it is unclear how efficient these measures are from...

Banks, Sweat and Shelter in Addis Ababa: Sites and Services in Performance

In the 1970s and 1980s the politics of international development aid keenly promoted planned progressive development strategies as the primal method to produce affordable housing for the urban poor. Through this period, the World Bank used the so-called “sites and services” program to encourage staged development, flexibility, and the use of...

Ethiopia's emerging domestic biogas sector: Current status, bottlenecks and drivers

Ethiopia experiences an energy and environmental crisis due to the sustained reliance on woody biomass to satisfy its energy needs. This situation could be improved by using biogas. This paper analyses the current status of the domestic biogas sector in Ethiopia and identifies barriers and drivers that influence its development and further...

Bottlenecks and drivers in Ethiopia domestic biogas sector

A Culture of Innovation: A model for Qualitative Analysis at Universities and the Case Study of Civil Engineering Students at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology

Innovation offers opportunities for modernization and development. In recent years it has become a buzzword in the world of NGO’s, IGO’s and governments in developing countries and is featured in the proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals. Different types of innovation are increasingly recognized, complicating the classic notion of innovation...

From the Kebele to the Condominium: Accommodating Social and Spatial Practices in Ethiopia's Politics of Affordable Housing

One decade ago in the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, more than 80% of its four million inhabitants lived in the so-called kebele houses, which are the local variant of a well-known urban figure, the slum. In order to cope with the housing backlog sparked by the need to replace the dilapidated kebele houses, to accommodate the city’s...

Understanding Catchment Processes and Hydrological Modelling in the Abay/Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

The water resources in the Abay/Upper Blue Nile basin are the source of life for the several hundred million people living in the basin and further downstream. It provides more than 60% of the total Nile water. Intensive farming in unfavourable soils and slopes, overgrazing and soil erosion is among the major problems in the basin. Land...

Understanding soil conservation decision of farmers in the Gedeb watershed, Ethiopia

The aim of this study was to investigate the main factors that influence smallholders' adoption decision of soil conservation measures in the Gedeb watershed. Data from 498 household heads who live in the three districts of the watershed were analysed using the binary logistic regression model. We find that farmers need adequate cash to invest...

Conservation tillage systems and water productivity implications for smallholder farmers in semi-arid Ethiopia

Conservation tillage systems have been adopted by farmers in many countries to solve the problem of land degradation and declining water productivity. However, direct application of such tillage systems was not possible among resource poor smallholder farmers in semi arid areas of Ethiopia. Problems such as shortage of rainfall, cost of...