The Government of Ghana is committed to providing all Ghanaians with safe drinking water by 2030. On September 1st, 2020, the head of state of this West African country commissioned two pumping stations in the town of Amedzofe, located in the ho District, Volta Region of Ghana. The water will be pumped from the Volta, a Trans boundary river shared by six West African countries (Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Togo). The stations will also have three reservoirs where the water will be stored.
This outcome comes approximately one year after the completion of the hydraulic infrastructure works, i.e. in December 2019. The pumping stations should be used to supply all the inhabitants of the town of Amedzofe with drinking water by 2024.
A project supported by Spain
The Amedzofe drinking water network reinforcement project, which took 18 months to complete, from July 2018 to December 2019, cost nearly 2 million Ghanaian cedis, the equivalent of more than $345,000. The initiative is part of a debt swap program signed between Ghana and Spain in June 2009. The program, which amounts to approximately $44.4 million (more than 256 million Ghanaian cedis), is designed to support Ghana’s socioeconomic development.
The extension of the Yendi drinking water network
The Amedzofe pumping stations are being commissioned just one month after the launch of another drinking water project in Yendi, northeast Ghana. The project plans to pump water from the Daka River, which runs through north-eastern Ghana before flowing into the Volta River. The water will then be conveyed through a 25 km long pipeline. The precious resource will make a first stop at a drinking water treatment plant with a capacity of 15,000 m3 per day. Once treated, the water will then be stored in a reservoir. The work is being carried out by Wapcos, an Indian supplier of integrated and customized solutions for the sustainable development of water, electricity and infrastructure projects.
Inès Magoum