In Mauritania, all means are being used, including external support, to achieve the sixth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which focuses on water and sanitation. To this end, 95,000 people in the southern council of Toujounine are now supplied by a 21 km drinking water network (to be extended to 141 km by 2025) recently inaugurated by the Mauritanian Ministry of Hydraulics and Sanitation.
It is the fruit of cooperation between the municipality of Nouakchott and the cities of Lausanne in Switzerland, Bordeaux and Metz in France. This intervention is part of the Community Water and Sanitation Access Project (PCAEA) launched in 2018. At a total cost of 3 million euros, the second phase (2022-2025) aims to subsidize “the connection of households and 34 schools, and the construction of five standpipes on the inaugurated network”, says the Association internationale des maires francophones (AIMF), which is piloting the implementation.
The challenge of providing access to drinking water for 4.4 million people
The association, chaired by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, hopes to eventually “develop project management for water and sanitation in the region”. And the Mauritanian capital sorely needs it, at a time when prolonged drought is lowering the levels of rivers, lakes and water tables, leading to water restrictions for crop irrigation, domestic and even industrial uses. A situation with which other parts of this West African country are familiar.
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According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), drinking water production in Mauritania is around 55,000 m3 per day, supplied essentially by “the only available water table in Trarza”. This quantity is quite insufficient when compared with the daily needs of a population of 4.4 million people, estimated at 100,000 m3. This is why the Mauritanian government is diversifying its financial partners in order to be up to date with ODD6 by 2030. The French Development Agency (AFD) is one of them. It has granted a loan of 14.4 million euros in 2022 to finance new drinking water supply systems in the Adrar and Tagant regions.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi