Making the ‘invisible’ visible

Malawian hydrogeologist Esther Mabedi has fond childhood memories of racing her cousins to the local water borehole in Milambo village.

Milambo, like many other rural areas in Malawi, and indeed Africa, heavily relies on groundwater, fresh water located below the surface of the earth, for water service provision for drinking and domestic use.

Alongside those happy memories with her cousins, Esther also recalls times when the borehole, a point to collect clean drinking water, would break down.

“I spent almost every long holiday with my grandmother in the village,” she said. “Fetching water with my cousins was playful at the time, being children. We would all chase each other to the borehole or to the spring to fetch water for my grandmother.

“I remember one time the borehole was out of use, and we had to go to another village to collect water – that meant a journey over hills and back. It wasn’t fun.

“That is the reality – when groundwater access points, such as boreholes, are not functioning, people have to resort to other water points, which may include open wells or rivers, that are not always clean.

"I want to leave people and communities in a better place than they started off.”

Groundwater is estimated to support up to 85% of Malawi’s rural population. There are many challenges that concern the management of groundwater supplies, including maintenance of numerous communal supply points, typically hand-pumped boreholes and wells, and risks of contamination.

Success in overcoming these challenges has been limited, with the rural population remaining burdened with insecurity in water access and poor health linked to water-related diseases, including cholera.

Esther is undertaking doctoral research within the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law to tackle these issues.

She is among the first awardees of the Africa Doctoral Fellowship, a multi-million pound scheme bringing African researchers to Dundee to complete their doctorates.

Her doctoral project looks to advance methods for assessing, mapping, and managing risks to groundwater quality and access, making the ‘invisible’ resource, and its challenges, visible.

“It is fascinating to think that the ground we step on has water beneath it,” she said. “It is invisible to us, but it’s there, and it is central to our rural communities in Malawi.

“There are two main issues facing Malawi’s groundwater – accessibility and quality.

“Quality concerns natural and anthropological contamination, including contaminants from sanitation provision.

“Our water and sanitation services are working against one another. Pit latrines are used extensively, and are often found in proximity with water points, meaning that cross contamination is a possibility.

"My work looks at how we can map groundwater and study how contamination occurs, then looking at how we can assess the risk of and improve the methods for assessing the risk of contamination.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that Malawi had the world’s deadliest cholera outbreak in 2023 – 1,771 people lost their lives to the disease in the country, a huge portion of the 4,000 who died worldwide.

Esther hopes her research can help change that narrative.

"If we manage our water and sanitation services better, it will reduce the number of people catching diseases such as cholera,” she explained.

“Down the line, I will be working with a real community in Malawi, looking at their approach in groundwater management and water provision, directly addressing and trying to improve social problems around water supply with the knowledge of science. Being able to study that and provide that for these people is important to me.”