By October 2024, an additional 115,000 people will be supplied with drinking water in Gabon. This will be thanks to a new drinking water plant currently under construction in the town of Mbomo, 15 km from Ntoum on the Cocobeach road, and 1,257 km from the capital Libreville. The facility will have a capacity of 35,000 m3 per day, expandable to 70,000 m3 per day. “Water and electricity are vital to the people of Gabon. And the government intends to go all the way in order to guarantee better living conditions for the population”, says the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources.
Gabonese Electricity and Water Company (SEEG) is building the drinking water treatment plant on a 7-hectare site. The state-owned company is currently carrying out phase I of the water project, dedicated to earthworks.
SEEG will continue with the construction of a water intake and an upstream pumping station to transport raw water from the Mbomo river to fill the storage basin. The works will also include the construction of a downstream lift station, which will transport the stored water to the drinking water treatment plant. Pipes with a diameter of 800 mm will be laid over a 15 km stretch between the various facilities at Mbomo.
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The drinking water project is part of the three-year Investment Plan (PIT) 2022-2025, which aims to improve the supply of drinking water and electricity in Gabon. The Gabonese government is financing the various aspects of its strategy with a loan of 100 billion CFA francs (around 152.45 million euros) from the Gabonese bank BGFI Bank. The financing agreement was signed between the two parties in April 2022.
Inès Magoum