Koen@Bamako #11 Bustling Burkina
An update from West AfricaLike everything else, the pandemic is disrupting the frequency of my blogs. No regular office hours, children doing their online schooling at home and long days behind MS Teams. I realise how much I appreciated my structured life. But then, Mali has not been hit as hard as Europe. The average number of new Covid-19 cases is about 20 per day (end of January 2021), after a peak in December (around 80 cases per day). Schools were closed for three weeks in January, but have since reopened. Public life continues as normal, although also in Bamako people are keeping more distance, physical contact is avoided and people consistently wear masks.
Start of a new programme in Burkina Faso
The Dutch Water Authorities have been active in Burkina Faso since 2011. They have built up a solid reputation when it comes to developing capacity in the field of Integrated Water Resources Management. This has not gone unnoticed and in 2019 discussions started with the Dutch Embassy in Ouagadougou about developing a programme to continue working with our partners (Agences de l’Eau) to improve access to water and sanitation while conserving soil and water resources. With the Dutch development organisation SNV (with an extensive track record of water projects in Burkina Faso), we worked on a proposal in 2020.
In December 2020, the €12.5M project was launched (see article). Titled ‘Eau, Cle du Développement Durable, ECDD (Water, Key to Sustainable Development)’, this four-year project is financed by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Burkina Faso. The ECDD will be implemented under the authority of the Ministry of Water and Sanitation (Ministère de l’Eau et de l’Assainissement, MEA). It will facilitate the partnership of SNV and World Waternet with local governments and five water agencies operating along the river basins of Burkina Faso.
Rehabilitating of dams and reservoirs in Burkina Faso
Another milestone is the start of the Develop2Build (D2B) studies for the rehabilitation of nine dams and reservoirs. Burkina Faso is largely dependent on its rainwater. The country is dotted with smaller and larger reservoirs (more than 1500 in total) to catch the precipitation that falls during the rainy season from June to September. Most of these reservoirs were built in the 1980s and are by now in poor condition.
World Waternet has linked RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, with our water partners in Burkina Faso in 2019 to see if infrastructural investments could be made in some of these reservoirs. In 2020, a prefeasibility study was done by RVO (in close collaboration with Burkinabe partners and the Dutch Water Authorities) and in October 2020, a grant was provided by RVO for the feasibility phase (see article). In January 2021, an internationally tendered Dutch-Burkinabe consortium was contracted, which will start with the execution a feasibility study.
If, in the coming 18 months, the results of the studies show that certain investments in the rehabilitation of the dams and the dredging of the reservoirs can improve the water availability for users, RVO’s DRIVE programme might finance up to 50% of the total costs (up to 60 million Euro) through a grant.
The gold project: L’Or Blue
L’Or Blue (la Gestion Intégrée des Ressources en Eau en relation du secteur aurifère) is a sub-project of long-term programme between the Dutch Water Authorities and Burkina Faso, called Faso Koom. With L’Or Blue, we aim to mitigate the negative impact of small-scale gold mining on the water system.
For this project, we are now applying for co-financing of the VIA Water Programme of Aqua for All. With this, we would like to pilot a technique in which the groundwater that is extracted from the mines, is retained in a basin and can be reused for agriculture, drinking water and other usage. A concept note has just been approved and we are now working on a full proposal.
Pictures: water hyacinth in Parc Bangr Weogo, Ouagadougou (header), MEA office in Ouagadougou (middle), Kiulia Dam in Ziniaré (below. By Mart Kamphuis.