In Jarra Madina, in The Gambia's Lower River Region, women and girls set out before dawn to fetch water from wells their forefathers dug a century ago. The water was often muddy. The walk was up to five kilometres. That time is gone now. What replaced it is the real story.
There is a kind of poverty that does not show up in GDP figures: the poverty of time. In Jarra Madina, a small farming community on The Gambia's Lower River, women spent hours every day doing something that should take minutes. Fetching water. Walking to wells that were far, slow and often unsafe. Loading containers onto their heads. Carrying them back.
The wells had been dug by their forefathers more than a century ago. The water they produced was muddy, untreated and linked to a persistent cycle of waterborne disease in the community. Pregnant women made the same journey, heavy containers balanced on their heads, risking injury with every step. There was no other option.
Sarjo Jallow, who leads the local women's group in Jarra Madina, remembers what that daily reality felt like.
"Before, we used to beg each other for water to drink. Pregnant women carried heavy containers on their heads and risked injury. It was painful to watch." Sarjo Jallow, head of the local women's group, Jarra Madina
The hour the taps turned on
Today, clean water flows directly into the community through solar-powered water systems. They were installed under the Climate Smart Rural WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) Development Project, co-financed by the African Development Bank (AfDB) with $10 million, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) with $9 million. Pump stations draw water from protected sources, filter it, and distribute it to taps in homes, schools and health centres across the village. The solar panels power the pumps silently, without fuel costs, or dependence on a grid that may or may not be reliable.
The physical change is visible and measurable. What is harder to see, but equally real, is what happened to the hours that fetching water from the well used to consume. Hours that are now available for something else. For tending fields. For running a small business. For sitting with children at the end of the day instead of making one more trip to a well. For sleeping an extra hour before dawn.
"We have water at our doorstep. Our children are healthy and in school. This project has brought dignity and hope back to our community." Sarjo Jallow added.
Bocar Cisse, the AfDB's Project Task Manager for the initiative, frames what happened in Jarra Madina as something larger than a water project.
"This infrastructure is not just about water. It is a testimony to collaboration between the Bank, the GEF, and the Government of The Gambia, to bring relief, empower women, and protect the environment." Bocar Cisse, Project Task Manager, African Development Bank Group.
The climate logic
The project's 'climate smart' designation is important. The Gambia is among the countries most exposed to the effects of climate change in West Africa: rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, coastal erosion and increasing drought frequency are already affecting agriculture and water availability. The open wells of Jarra Madina were always vulnerable to these pressures. A muddy well becomes unusable faster in a drought year. A community without reliable water is a community without a buffer.
Solar-powered water infrastructure changes this equation. It draws on the one resource, sunlight, that climate change does not reduce in this part of the world. It provides water that is not dependent on seasonal rainfall. And it is designed to serve not only the current generation of users, but the communities that will need water in a hotter, drier Gambia twenty years from now.
What 500 communities are gaining
Jarra Madina is one village in a project that targets approximately 500 rural communities across The Gambia. Each community that gets a functioning water system receives more than clean water. It gains the possibility of better health outcomes, higher school attendance for girls who are no longer needed for water collection, and more productive time for the women who have historically carried the heaviest burden of that work. These are not side effects of a water project. They are its central purpose.
- $10 million AfDB contribution to the Climate Smart Rural WASH project
- $9 million GEF co-financing
- ~500 rural communities targeted for solar-powered water access
- 5 km distance, women in Jarra Madina previously walked for water
- 100+ years of age of the open wells the solar systems replaced
