Borehole Pumps for Uganda's Refugee Settlements: Water Supply That Stays Up

A borehole pump in a refugee settlement has one job: deliver the daily litres the population needs without stopping. UNHCR plans displacement water supply on 20 litres per person per day, excluding leakage, and the Sphere minimum survival figure is 15 litres per person per day. Size the pump to those numbers, then decide what powers it. On fuel cost and uptime, solar increasingly wins.

How many litres per person per day must the supply deliver?

Plan on 15 to 20 litres per person per day, and size the pump to the upper figure. The Sphere Handbook sets 15 litres per person per day as the minimum survival standard for drinking, cooking and hygiene, while UNHCR plans refugee water supply on 20 litres per person per day before leakage. The WHO puts the emergency basic survival need at 7.5 to 15 litres per capita per day, with around 20 litres the minimum for essential health and hygiene. For a settlement of 20,000 people, 20 litres each is 400,000 litres a day; that figure, not a brochure, sets the pump duty. Our pump equipment range is sized to demand of exactly this kind across our work in Uganda.

How does pump capacity map to Sphere water-point standards?

Work back from the water points, because Sphere caps how many people each one can serve. The Sphere Handbook sets 250 people per tap at 7.5 L/min, 500 people per hand pump at 17 L/min, and 400 people per single-user open well at 12.5 L/min, with the nearest water point within 500 m and queuing under 30 minutes. A motorised borehole feeding a tank and tapstand network is the only practical way to hold those ratios at settlement scale, because the alternative is hundreds of hand pumps. Total your tapstand flow, add storage to cover peak draw and pump downtime, and size the borehole pump and rising main to refill that storage inside the pumping window. A pump that meets the daily volume but cannot keep the tank ahead of the morning queue still fails the under-30-minute Sphere standard.

Why does a diesel pump cost so much to keep running?

Because the fuel bill never stops, and in a remote settlement it dominates the budget. The World Bank reports that a typical diesel borehole pump spends more than US$5,000 a year on fuel, roughly 40% of its initial system cost, every year, on top of higher maintenance. The FAO and GIZ add that a solar pump's operating cost is around half that of a diesel pump, while diesel pumps carry high operating costs in remote areas and need frequent servicing that is "not always available". That servicing gap is the real risk in a settlement: a fuel stockout or a missed service is a day with no water at the tap. The fuel exposure is not theoretical right now, with a deepening fuel crisis disrupting aid across southern and eastern Africa and raising both transport cost and access risk.

Is a solar borehole pump actually cheaper over its life?

Yes, on the published lifecycle maths, and the gap is large. The World Bank finds that converting a diesel borehole scheme to solar cuts life-cycle cost by around 36%, US$59,000 against US$93,000, and that solar pumping is cost-competitive with diesel "in all size ranges". IRENA reports that solar pumps require no fuel and have a very low operation cost compared with diesel, with diesel-to-solar systems typically paying back in around five years on fuel savings alone. For a procurement officer, that is the case in one line: the diesel pump is cheaper to buy and far more expensive to keep, and the difference is paid in fuel the settlement may not be able to source. This is total cost of ownership, not a green pitch; see how it reads for UN agency and NGO buyers.

Why are aid agencies already moving boreholes to solar?

Because the sector has tested it at scale and kept going. By the end of 2023, UNHCR had solarised 295 boreholes, 50% of the boreholes in its operations, saving more than 32,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. The headline is the uptime and the fuel saved, not the carbon: half of UNHCR's boreholes now run without a daily fuel order, a generator service rota, or a fuel stockout to plan around. For a settlement water supply that has to stay up through a funding squeeze and a fuel crisis already disrupting aid in the region, removing the fuel dependency is the single biggest reliability gain available.

What about days with low sun or peak demand?

Design for it with storage and, where the risk justifies it, a hybrid. A solar borehole pump produces most in the middle of the day, so the standard answer is to pump into elevated or ground storage sized to carry the settlement through evenings, early mornings and cloudy spells, then gravity-feed the tapstands. This is also how you hold the Sphere under-30-minute queuing standard through the morning peak. Where continuity is critical and the borehole is deep, a solar-diesel hybrid keeps a generator as backup while shifting the bulk of pumping to solar, which still captures most of the fuel saving the World Bank documents without betting the supply on perfect weather. The right split depends on borehole yield, depth and demand profile, which is why a yield test before specification matters.

How do I specify and commission the pump so it stays up?

Specify on tested borehole yield and measured head, then commission and support the pump in-country. A borehole pump sized on an optimistic yield will draw the water level down and cycle or run dry; a yield test gives you the sustainable abstraction rate to size against. From there, match the pump head to the actual pumping water level plus the rising main and tank height, not the resting level. The part that decides whether the supply stays up is after-sales: a settlement borehole needs a supplier who installs, commissions, yield-tests and stocks spares within reach, because a pump waiting weeks on an imported part is a settlement on water trucking. That in-country chain is what we run from the region rather than from a port, alongside our pump equipment supply across Uganda.

Frequently asked questions

How much water per person per day must a refugee settlement supply? UNHCR plans refugee water supply on 20 litres per person per day before leakage, above the Sphere minimum survival standard of 15 litres per person per day; size the pump to the upper figure.

How many people can one water point serve under Sphere standards? Sphere sets 500 people per hand pump at 17 L/min and 250 people per tap at 7.5 L/min, which is why a motorised borehole feeding a tapstand network is the practical way to serve settlement populations.

Is a solar borehole pump cheaper than diesel over its lifetime? Yes. The World Bank finds solar cuts borehole scheme life-cycle cost by around 36%, US$59,000 against US$93,000, and is cost-competitive with diesel in all size ranges.

What is the payback period for converting a diesel pump to solar? IRENA reports that diesel-to-solar systems typically pay back in around five years on fuel savings, because solar pumps need no fuel and have very low operating cost.

How much does diesel pumping cost to run each year? The World Bank reports a typical diesel borehole pump spends more than US$5,000 a year on fuel, around 40% of its initial system cost, every year, before maintenance.

Talk to a supplier who keeps the supply running

Specialized Logistics Solutions is the authorised East and Central Africa distributor for Multiquip and Aussie Pumps, supplying borehole, solar and surface pumps with in-country installation, commissioning, yield-testing and spares across Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, DR Congo and CAR. We are a UNGM-registered vendor (No. 380716), which means we hold stock and engineers in the region rather than shipping a pump to a port and leaving you to commission it. Tell us your population, borehole yield and power options, and request a quotation for a settlement water supply built to stay up.