Ethiopia is the country with the worst access to drinking water in the world as only 24% of the population has it. The Tigray region has suffered two severe droughts in the last 30 years. The last one, between 1984 and 1986, caused the death of a million people.

The women use an average of five hours a day to supply their homes with water, even though the water is unhealthy and dangerous. Frequently, they are besieged by hyenas and some of them have given birth on the way. In many districts of Tigray, water consumption is five litres per person per day (which must be enough to drink, cook, clean up and wash clothes).

In 2004, the NGO Intermón Oxfam started up the Water Bank project in the four Ethiopian districts that have been most affected by the lack of access to drinking water. The objective is to supply 20 litres of drinking water per person per day - the minimum amount recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) - to the people that suffer from severe water problems by making use of springs and digging wells.

In some latitudes of our planet, the title of this report is part of popular imagery. Women –fairies– who bring about life with water and who extract prosperity from the water. In the driest part of Africa, millions of fairies travel the territory each day for three, four, five or more hours, loaded down with containers that weigh 30 kilos of life, 30 litres of water. The smallest fairies, just 5 or 6 years old, can only carry 10 kilos of life –of water– and don’t have time to go to school. Unlike the legend, most African women do not have access to pure, crystalline water, but rather water that is muddy and contaminated. “Women of Water” explores the water problem in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it also aims to document the steady fight of the women of Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania –the main figures in this report– to obtain safe and accessible water which will open the floodgates for them to education, health and economic development. .