Ethiopia has launched a Universal Access Plan (UAP) to achieve safe water supply and sanitation for the
country’s 77 million people by 2012. This would mean providing safe water service to 50.9 million new
users in just 7 years. The government recently reviewed the progress of UAP and concluded that it would
be challenging to achieve its targets with the existing implementation approach. The review strongly
recommended that lowcost
options need to be pursued to accelerate progress. Self Supply is proposed to
be one such approach, providing safe water supply to households without external subsidy. This paper
briefly discusses the practice and potential of Self Supply approach; and proposes key next steps needed
to help achieve the UAP target for safe water supply in Ethiopia
