Boreholes are not the solution to Zimbabwe's water crisis—they may worsen it

Zawya

06-05-2025

The Zimbabwean government has, in recent years, taken to vigorously drilling boreholes across the country as its signature approach to solving the country's deepening water crisis.
Branded as the 'Presidential Borehole Drilling Programme,' this initiative aims to install boreholes in all of Zimbabwe's 35,000 villages by 2025.
What may appear at face value as a noble gesture to provide clean and accessible water—especially to underserved rural communities—is, in fact, a glaring indictment of the government's failure to implement sustainable, equitable, and future-proof solutions to one of the most basic human needs.
Water is not a privilege. It is a fundamental right.
And the provision of safe, reliable, and accessible water should be the cornerstone of any government's responsibility to its citizens.
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But instead of investing in long-term, sustainable infrastructure—such as building or rehabilitating dams, laying modern pipelines, and upgrading treatment plants—the Zimbabwean government has opted for what is essentially a patchwork solution that may provide temporary relief while ignoring the root causes of the problem.
In rural communities, the drilling of boreholes is being paraded as a revolutionary development initiative, giving the false impression of progress and prosperity.
Yet the reality is far from flattering.
Many of these communities have historically been excluded from the fruits of independence—receiving little to no public investment in water infrastructure for decades.
And now, instead of finally receiving piped water from nearby dams or water bodies, they are given boreholes, which, while useful in the short term, are unsustainable when deployed at this scale and without proper management.
Urban areas are no better.
Once proud cities such as Bulawayo, Gweru, and Harare that enjoyed consistent piped water during the colonial era are now experiencing intermittent water cuts lasting days or even weeks.
In some towns—such as Redcliff, my own hometown—residents have gone for several years without tap water, relying entirely on boreholes, shallow wells, and other unsafe or unreliable sources to survive.
Residents are left to queue at community boreholes or, for those with means, drill private ones.
The collapse of municipal water systems—brought about by years of neglect, mismanagement, lack of investment, and corruption—is now being papered over by sinking boreholes even in densely populated urban zones.
But is this truly a sustainable solution?
Groundwater is not an infinite resource.
Over-reliance on boreholes—especially in the absence of comprehensive hydrogeological studies and long-term planning—can lead to the rapid depletion of aquifers.
As more people and institutions tap into the same underground reserves, water tables steadily decline, leading to boreholes drying up or producing significantly reduced yields.
In extreme cases, entire communities may be left worse off than before, with no access to either surface or underground water sources.
Climate change only worsens this reality, as prolonged droughts, rising temperatures, and erratic rainfall patterns dramatically reduce the natural recharge of aquifers.
With less surface water filtering into the ground, boreholes are essentially draining a resource that is no longer being replenished, accelerating the crisis.
The environmental toll is equally alarming.
Excessive groundwater extraction can cause land subsidence, where the ground literally sinks due to the loss of underground water support, damaging buildings, roads, and other infrastructure.
Natural ecosystems that depend on underground water—such as wetlands and river systems fed by springs—also suffer, threatening biodiversity.
Moreover, in a country like Zimbabwe where regulation and enforcement are weak, the risk of groundwater contamination is high.
In both rural and urban areas with inadequate sanitation, agricultural runoff, and unregulated industrial waste disposal, toxic substances and pathogens can easily seep into aquifers.
Once polluted, these underground sources are extremely difficult—and costly—to clean, posing long-term health hazards to communities relying on them.
What's even more worrying is the emerging trend of commodifying this desperation.
Citizens who drill their own boreholes are now being charged by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), effectively penalizing people for finding their own solutions in the face of government failure.
This is morally indefensible.
Water scarcity created by mismanagement and neglect has become a source of revenue for the state.
The government is shamelessly profiting from its own failures and incompetence—forcing citizens to pay for alternatives like boreholes—while sinking them deeper into poverty and despair.
Even more disturbing is how the 'Presidential Borehole Drilling Programme' has been politicized to serve partisan interests.
By attaching the president's name to the project, the ruling elite is seeking to extract political mileage from a basic service that should have been provided decades ago.
In effect, water access is being transformed into a campaign tool, a gesture of charity from the powerful to the powerless, rather than a constitutional obligation of the state.
This breeds dependency and undermines the citizens' right to demand better governance.
What Zimbabwe needs is not more boreholes, but a complete overhaul of its water governance systems.
This means tackling corruption head-on, enforcing transparency in water project financing, and holding both central and local government authorities accountable for the collapse of service delivery.
It also requires bold investments in infrastructure—rehabilitating dams, building new reservoirs, upgrading water treatment plants, and modernizing pipeline networks to ensure equitable distribution of water in both rural and urban areas.
Even more troubling is the government's proposal to privatize water provision in urban areas—a move that shifts a basic public good into the hands of profit-driven entities.
In a country already plagued by widespread poverty and inequality, privatization would only worsen the plight of ordinary citizens, who will be forced to pay even more for a service that should be universally accessible and affordable.
Worse still, in Zimbabwe's deeply entrenched culture of corruption, such privatization schemes are rarely transparent or accountable.
Public tenders are routinely awarded to politically connected individuals or shell companies without going through proper procurement processes.
Millions of dollars are siphoned off through inflated contracts or projects that never materialize, while the suffering masses continue to go without water.
In essence, privatization in this context becomes yet another avenue for looting—a system where the elite enrich themselves under the guise of service delivery, while the people continue to live without clean, safe water.
Nonetheless, there are countries from which we can draw valuable lessons.
For example, Namibia—a similarly water-scarce country—has invested heavily in water recycling and desalination, ensuring that urban areas like Windhoek are not wholly reliant on traditional sources.
Rwanda has made significant progress in rural water access by combining dam construction with gravity-fed water systems, enabling piped water to reach remote communities without overburdening groundwater.
South Africa, despite its own challenges, maintains a more integrated national water strategy that balances the use of surface water, groundwater, and conservation practices, backed by a relatively functional institutional framework.
Zimbabwe can—and must—adopt a similarly integrated water resource management strategy.
Groundwater can certainly be part of the solution, but it must not become the primary approach.
Boreholes should serve as backup or emergency interventions, not the front line of a national water policy.
Furthermore, citizen-led water governance must be strengthened, with local communities actively involved in water management and maintenance to ensure sustainability.
Ultimately, we must ask ourselves: what kind of future are we building when we normalize temporary solutions as permanent policy?
When we celebrate boreholes as milestones of progress rather than emergency lifelines?
When we allow political leaders to gain credit for solving problems they created or neglected for years?
Zimbabweans deserve better.
They deserve running, safe, and clean water in every home—not just a hand pump in the middle of a village.
They deserve infrastructure that matches the dignity of a modern, independent state—not the illusion of development dressed in presidential branding.
Until the government begins to address the structural, institutional, and financial shortcomings that have decimated our water systems, we will continue to go around in circles—drilling hole after hole, while the deeper hole, the one in our governance and planning, only grows wider.
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