H1 2026 Evaluation
Eritrea Reservoir Transparency
F0Opaque — Ranked #164 out of 167 countries
weight 30%
weight 20%
weight 15%
weight 13%
weight 10%
weight 8%
weight 5%
Primary source evaluated
Ministry of Land, Water and Environment — Water Resources Department (WRD)
https://shabait.comDimension breakdown
Data Availability
20% of total score
Coverage is 0 (no national reservoirs >10 hm³ with public data). Quality dimensions for the COVERED subset are therefore 0 by definition. Original notes preserved below: No public reservoir data exists. The Water Resources Department (WRD) under MoLWE collects hydrological data internally but publishes nothing publicly. The capacity of major reservoirs such as Gerset and Sememo is officially undisclosed. Narrative updates appear only on state media (Shabait) without any quantitative storage or level figures.
Technical Accessibility
15% of total score
No data format or access mechanism exists. There is no national open data portal, no structured download, no API, and no machine-readable publication of any water or reservoir data. Eritrea has no open data tradition and the government does not release datasets to the public.
Coverage
30% of total score
Capacity-weighted (v1.3.0): 0/700 Mm³ = 0% (Toker + Gerset + smaller agricultural dams; the Eritrean government publishes no operational reservoir data of any kind). Prior justification (preserved for context): Methodology denominator counts reservoirs with capacity >10 hm³. Eritrea has at least 3–5 qualifying reservoirs: Sememo (~200 Mm³), Kerkebet (~330 Mm³), Gerset (~20 Mm³), Toker (73 m RCC dam, substantial capacity), and likely others among the 785 dams cited by the Ministry of Information. None has associated public storage or level data: official capacity figures for Sememo and Gerset were undisclosed even in international databases such as GRanD until recent state-media disclosures. Coverage = round(100 × 0 / 4) = 0.
Historical Depth
13% of total score
No historical series is publicly accessible. While WRD maintains an internal database of water resources documents and study reports dating to the 1990s, none of this material is released publicly. The 2009–2016 IWRM Action Plan references internal data collection but no public archive exists.
Update Frequency
10% of total score
No regular publication of any kind. State media articles about dam construction and water infrastructure appear sporadically (annually at most) and contain only qualitative descriptions. There is no operational data release cadence.
Methodological Transparency
8% of total score
No public documentation of measurement methods, sensor types, or quality-control procedures. The WRD database structure and data collection protocols are not published. Measurement standards applied to dams like Toker or Gerset are entirely opaque.
Language and Usability
5% of total score
No usable public water data interface exists in any language. State media publications are available in Tigrinya, Arabic, and English but contain only propaganda-style narratives. Arabic and Tigrinya are official languages; there is no English-language data portal. International users have no meaningful path to access reservoir data.
Evaluator notes
Eritrea scores at the absolute floor of the RTI ranking. The country is one of the world's most closed states, operating under an authoritarian government that treats infrastructure data as sensitive. The Water Resources Department under MoLWE does collect hydrological data internally — the IWRM Action Plan (2009–2016) and the National Communications to UNFCCC confirm that a technical database exists — but nothing is published publicly. Major reservoirs including the 73-metre Toker Dam, the Gerset storage dam, and dozens of micro-dams built under successive five-year programs (98 masonry dams by 2025) generate no public data whatsoever. Capacity figures for Gerset and Sememo are explicitly undisclosed even in international databases such as GRanD. The Italian colonial-era hydraulic legacy (Fanko and other early dams) and post-independence construction have created meaningful physical infrastructure, but zero data transparency accompanies it. The official language trifecta of Tigrinya, Arabic, and English offers no advantage because the absence of any public interface renders language usability irrelevant. This is a structural opacity case driven by political choice, not technical incapacity.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-09-15 · Methodology v1.3.0