System Resilience
Addressing the root causes of water scarcity through groundwater recharge, runoff management and grazing reserves.
Lined hafir dam holding seasonal runoff, Somaliland.
Beyond boreholes and dams.
We are increasingly focused on landscape and system-level interventions that address the root causes of water scarcity, not only its symptoms.
Using satellite-derived data on how much water dams capture and retain, our research built a picture of what actually drives performance. Two findings reframed the strategy: construction features like geomembranes and silt traps dramatically reduce seepage, and governance, the oversight and maintenance of a site, matters as much as the capital spent building it. The next step is to weigh each upgrade against its cost to find the highest-return investments.
Infrastructure alone cannot solve scarcity.
A systemic solution must address water quality, affordability and governance, not just storage. Emergency and infrastructure responses treat symptoms.
Our response
Move from one-off construction toward a system that captures, retains and governs water well, then prove and de-risk it so others can invest at scale.
Restore and rehabilitate
Bring existing dams and catchments back into service rather than always building new.
Engineer for retention
Geomembranes, silt traps and oversight that keep water in the dam through the dry season.
Prove and de-risk
Generate the ground-level evidence needed to attract larger, coordinated, data-driven investment across the system.
Our impact
From the research and evaluation programme.
What we learnt
Governance is as important as capex.
Oversight and maintenance drive water retention as much as the money spent building a dam.
Quality investments pay off.
A cheap liner at the Biyo dam failed and it fell into disrepair; rehabilitating it properly in 2025 proved the case for doing it well.
Our role is to de-risk.
Reducing drought vulnerability needs large, coordinated investment; we test and prove approaches so others can fund them at scale.
Build water resilience with us.
Partnership, co-funding and operator enquiries start here.