China-Africa: China holds rainwater harvesting courses for African, Central Asian countries
LANZHOU, (Xinhua) — A total of 43 experts and government officials from Africa and central Asia are attending a six-week training program on rainwater storage in northwest China’s Gansu Province.
The courses, which started from Monday in the provincial capital Lanzhou, focus on how to build water cellars to gather rainwater and how to maintain water quality.
Sponsored by China’s Ministry of Commerce and organized by Gansu Provincial Water Resources Department, the program had trained almost 200 technicians from 47 developing countries for free since 2003, said Luan Weigong, deputy director of the department.
Gansu is one of the driest provinces in China, with annual rainfall of less than 300 mm.
Its inhabitants and specialists have developed technologies in rainwater harvesting, storage, purification and irrigation. A single cellar can store 30 to 40 cubic meters of water, enough for a family of 10 for five months in dry seasons.
About 3 million rainwater storage cellars have been built across the province to provide drinking water for 2.63 million people and to irrigate 367,000 hectares of farmland, said Ze Bazu, vice governor of Gansu.
“African countries and Gansu have similar conditions. Rain falls mainly in a three-month period, and there is little rain in the dry season.,” said Li Yuanhong, head of the Gansu Research Institute for Water Conservancy.
Ackim Shawa, a trainee from Zambia, said his country had been building rainwater harvesting projects.
“Gansu’s technologies in this field help us a lot,” he said.
The institute had sent expert teams to drought-hit African and Central Asian countries to build water cellars, Li said.
“We have built more than 200 cellars in Nigeria, helped design 15 rainwater harvesting projects in Saudi Arabia, and provided consulting services to Caribbean countries,” Li said.
| Editor: Zhang Xiang |