Rains produce plenty of clean water running off roads, roofs, and rocks. This rainwater can be stored for the dry seasons when it is needed most. There are three types of storage, namely:

1) Evaporation. In hot climates it amounts to about 3 mm/day = 90 cm in a month. The solution for water tanks is to roof them but since earth dams cannot be roofed the evaporation losses cannot be reduced.

2) Increased consumption of water from tanks situated next to a house can be caused by neighbours begging for water and children forgetting to close the water tap. This can be avoided by extending the draw-off pipe into the house and locking the water tap.

3) Animals breaking into fenced earth dams are difficult to prevent. A profitable solution could be to charge the livestock owners a fee for watering their animals.

4) Seepage through the floor of earth dams is reduced by silt brought in by rainy seasons but siltation reduces the storage capacity of earth dams.

Chemically disinfected water can have a residual protection which will deal with light recontaminations, but even this protection disappears in time. Thus, to prevent recontamination, only clean storage containers should be used and the water should be protected from any contact with objects other than the container. The container requires periodic emptying, washing, and rinsing with scalding or heavily chlorinated water, to prevent the growth of biofilms.

The storage container should be equipped with a practical mechanism to retrieve the water, e.g. a tap (spigot) especially when bigger containers are used.

Storing water for later use is more difficult than collecting water. Ways to store water for household use include tanks or cisterns. Tanks can be constructed of bricks, masonry, corrugated steel sheets, or reinforced concrete, either above ground or below ground. The capacity of the tanks should be determined based on the run-off expected and on the estimated daily use.

Before the rain starts, the tank or storage area should be clean. The first direct flush of rainwater should be directed away from the storage, since it contains the dirt from the catchment area. Cover the tank to prevent evaporation from the sun, keep the water surface clean, and prevent mosquitos from entering the water.

The storage tank should be placed near the place of usage, e.g. the kitchen. Furthermore, there should be a possibility to redirect the overflow or spilled water to a nearby garden or orchard.

Storage tanks and reservoirs can become breeding places for malaria mosquitos. The open water area can be used as breeding places for the mosquitos even in the dry season, when malaria transmission is normally decreased. The open water surface should not be accessible to mosquitoes: the tanks should be covered and all other inlets (taps, ventilation pipes) screened with mosquito-proof mesh. It should also be avoided that breeding sites are established downstream of the overflow.

1) Ground tanks that are built below the ground level. These are mainly used for storage of dirty run-off water from roads and compounds. Ground tanks can also be used as storage for clean domestic water if the tanks are roofed and connected to gutters attached to roofs or rocks.

2) Surface tanks standing on the ground level which are cylindrical and mainly used for storage of run-off water from roofs and rocks.

Ground tanks should always be designed as either hemi-spherical (half ball shape) or cylindrical because those shapes equalize the pressure of water and soil whether the tanks are full or empty.

Water from road catchments should not be used for domestic consumption because the water from murram and dirt roads contains dung and other pollutants, while water from tarmac roads contains tar which is harmful to peoples' health.

Water for domestic use should be collected from either roofs, rocks or drawn from shallow ground water by means of hand-dug wells or hand-drilled boreholes.

Plastic jerrycans play a very important role in rural water supply because nearly all domestic water is transported from the water sources to the homesteads in jerrycans.

Many women in dry areas have to carry one full jerry can of 20 litres of water, which is equal to 20 kg, on their back every second day. In addition the women must also walk up to 10 km with the empty jerry can from the homestead to the water source which is usually in a riverbed.
They must also wait at the riverbed until it is their turn to fill their jerry cans with the water that seeps slowly into the waterholes they have scooped out of the sand.

They must walk 10 km up hill with the 20 kg jerry can because riverbeds are always in valleys. At home they must ration the 20 litres of water to be sufficient for 2 days consumption because no woman has the stamina to fetch water from 10 km away every day, while also taking care of her children, livestock and homestead.

Where water has to be fetched from sources further away than 10 km a donkey has to be purchased. A donkey can carry 4 jerry cans of water for distances up to 30 km during a return trip taking 2 days.

In those dry areas the cost of a donkey is equal to the dowry for a wife. When the rain comes, the cost of a donkey decreases because water can be fetched nearby, while the cost of dowry increases because now manual labour is needed in the fields.

Nowadays, some people prefer bicycles to donkeys for fetching water because bicycles are cheaper and more versatile than donkeys, although a bicycle can only carry a maximum of 3 jerry cans which is 60 kg of water.

Step 1: Mix a 1/8 of a bag of cement with coarse river sand in a ratio of 1 part of cement to 3 parts of river sand.

Step 2: Smear the mixture onto the inside of the oil drum in a 1cm layer and let it dry for a day.

Step 3: Next day apply a second coat of mortar 1:3 being 2 cm thick onto the interior of the drum and smoothen it.

Step 4: Within the same day, mix cement with water until it becomes a slurry called NIL and press it onto the interior plaster with a square steel trowel.

Step 5: Keep the oil drum under shade and sprinkle the plaster with water 3 times a day for a week, then fill it up with water.

Many people plaster their new oil-drums this way because the taste of the water drawn from drums coated with cement mortar has a nice sweet taste.

Farmers and laymen have built several thousands of 5,000 litres water tanks using a technique called in situ which consists of compacting concrete reinforced with a spiral of barbed wire in between two cylindrical moulds made of either roofing sheets or old oil drums.

Local artisans, who can build houses, can usually also build water tanks of burnt bricks, soil compressed blocks, quarry blocks or concrete blocks. The volume of such tanks may vary in sizes from 3,000 litres to 30,000 litres.

It is important that the reinforcement of these tanks is made by wrapping a barbed wire, g 12.5, tightly around the outer side of the tank in a spiral spaced 5 cm at the lower half of the tank, where the greatest strength is needed, and 10 cm on the upper half.