-Research & Student Hub-

Research, fieldwork, and student involvement

Savannah Water Project welcomes students, researchers, and clinicians interested in rural water access, public health, surgical care, and development practice in northern Ghana. We're a small organization, and the opportunities we can support directly are limited — but we publish what we learn, we point people to the resources that helped us, and we want to hear from anyone who plans to do serious work in this space

GuideGet involvedLearn the basicsStay in touchPublications

Featured Publication

How to build a well in northern Ghana

A field-tested guide to drilling, community engagement, and long-term maintenance in the Savannah and Sahel regions.

This is the document we wish we'd had when we started. Five years of fieldwork in the West Gonja municipality and recent expansion into the Northern Region, distilled into practical guidance for anyone planning to drill, fund, or partner on a well project in this part of West Africa. The guide covers site selection, geology and drilling realities specific to the region, community entry, closed-pipe casing and component decisions, pump choice (and why we've moved off solar), maintenance planning, and the kinds of failures we've learned to design around.

It is written for other organizations doing — or considering doing — similar work, for student researchers studying rural water access, and for clinicians and public health practitioners whose programs depend on the water foundation underneath them.

Read the guideDownload PDF

Ways to get involved

Our research and student programs are in early development. As they grow, we'll be opening up opportunities to contribute to fieldwork, data collection, analysis, and writing — across both our water and surgical programs. Below is what we're working toward. If any of it fits your background, get in touch.

Water and public health icon

Water and public health

We expect to offer student and researcher opportunities in: pump functionality and failure-mode tracking, water quality testing, community maintenance models, supply chain analysis, and public health outcomes downstream of well projects. Field-based and remote roles will both be possible.

Express interest
Surgical and clinical icon

Surgical and clinical

We expect to offer student and clinician opportunities in: case data collection and analysis, hernia and hydrocele burden-of-disease research, supply chain and equipment needs assessment, and structured follow-up on surgical outcomes. Clinical experience or strong methodological background preferred.

Express interest

Learn the basics

A lot of people who reach out to us are interested but don't yet have a working knowledge of borehole drilling, West African geology, or rural water infrastructure. Below is a curated set of resources we recommend as a starting point. None of these are SWP publications — they are external materials we've found useful and that we point our own new team members toward.

Geology and Groundwater

The water in northern Ghana doesn't sit in a uniform aquifer the way it does in much of the world. The region is underlain by Basement Complex crystalline rocks — granites, gneisses, migmatites — and in places by the Voltaian sedimentary basin. Neither is naturally porous the way a sandstone aquifer would be. Instead, the water lives in fractures: cracks, joints, and weathering zones in otherwise solid rock. Those fractures can hold remarkable amounts of water, and because they sit well below the surface, that water is year-round, cleaner than surface sources, and reliable for decades when properly reached. The trade-off is that you can't just dig anywhere. You have to find the fracture, which requires geophysics, hydrogeology, and an honest read on what makes this region different from others. Our field guide covers the geology in detail, including how electrical resistivity surveys are used to locate productive fracture zones.

Read the Field Guide
Dry cracked earth and rock formation

Publications and reports.

Field reports, case studies, and methodological notes from our work. The well-building guide above is our flagship publication. Other materials will appear here as we publish them.

Borehole Guide
Download PDF

The Research & Student Hub is one of the newer parts of SWP. If there's a topic you'd like us to write about, a resource we should add to the learn-the-basics section, or an opportunity you'd like us to consider creating, tell us.

Contact us