Eight municipalities in Côte d'Ivoire will soon be selected as beneficiaries of MuniWash. A project financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which aims to improve the access of West African populations to water, sanitation and hygiene services.
The rate of access to drinking water should increase in the near future in Côte d’Ivoire. In Aindi, 8 of the 201 municipalities in this West African country will soon be equipped with techniques and equipment to optimize drinking water services. The names of the 8 beneficiary communes of the Water, Hygiene and Sanitation of Municipalities in West Africa project, known by its English abbreviation MuniWash, will be known at the end of the selection process, the penultimate stage of which took place on May 11, 2020 in Abidjan. It is based on the diagnostic study of water and sanitation needs in each of the ten pre-selected municipalities.
In the beneficiary communes, the MuniWash project activity will consist in strengthening the capacities of the authorities and sector providers: increasing and sustaining private sector investment in water and sanitation services; improving the operational reliability of public utilities and water and sanitation service providers; improving the governance and management of water and sanitation projects by municipal authorities. The aim is to bridge the gap between the countries’ national priorities and sustainable development objectives (SDOs).
Côte d’Ivoire wants to achieve universal access to drinking water by 2030
The MuniWash project will run for five years (2019-2024). The West African project is being implemented in Benin and in Côte d’Ivoire by the American engineering company Tetra Tech in collaboration with the African Water Association (AfWA). The financial component is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the tune of $18 million.
This support from the USAID comes at the right time for Côte d’Ivoire, whose government announced in February 2020 an investment of 291 billion CFA francs (480 million dollars) to improve the population’s access to drinking water. According to Ibrahima Berthé, Managing Director of the Drinking Water Utility of Côte d’Ivoire (Onep), this investment should enable the country to achieve a coverage rate of 95 per cent of access to drinking water.
With a drinking water access rate of 82%, Côte d’Ivoire, as part of its government water access programme, intends to increase this capacity to 100% by 2030. This project is expected to require more than 1,000 billion CFA francs, or about 1.7 billion dollars.
Boris Ngounou
