Burkina Faso: Access to drinking water

From 26-28 November 2024, an international workshop is taking place in Ouagadougou to set up a system for monitoring and regulating the public drinking water supply in rural areas of Burkina Faso. The workshop is part of the project “Sustainable and equitable improvement of access to drinking water in Burkina Faso 2021-2025”, funded by the Danish Cooperation.

With the decentralisation adopted by Burkina Faso, water management is the responsibility of the municipalities. They are responsible for giving their opinion on the master plan for drinking water supply and sanitation, for drawing up and implementing local drinking water supply plans, and for participating in the construction and, in particular, the management of public drinking water infrastructure. This responsibility gives them the status of contracting authority and, by extension, owner of the public drinking water supply infrastructure in their area. They are also responsible for the local public drinking water service and must ensure its continuity in order to provide people with sustainable access to drinking water.

Souro André Sanon, Director General of Drinking Water, explains:

“In Burkina Faso at the moment, there are several methods of water management. There’s public management. With decentralisation, the state has given the municipalities the power to manage drinking water for the population. So some communes are managing access to drinking water themselves. There is another form of management that is encouraged, which is leasing. This involves hiring a specialist service provider with proven technical qualifications to manage the network on the basis of a leasing contract. There is also management by water user associations. The idea is that whatever the management method, we can ensure that all the players play their part. And their role is to provide the service on a daily basis, to maintain the network, to carry out the necessary network expansions and to ensure on a daily basis that people have access to water resources.”

But the reality on the ground is very different. According to Dr Boureima Kouanda, Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Sanitation, the operators claim to have profitability problems and are therefore unable to maintain the network, let alone expand it:

The state allocates a lot of money, either from the national budget or through loans, to build structures on the ground to provide drinking water. Unfortunately, there are real problems with the management of the service on the ground. In particular, we have leaseholders who are struggling to manage the public water service. Some say that because it’s a social service with fixed tariffs, they can’t manage it. And yet there is a lot of enthusiasm for this service. So we can’t understand why there’s so much enthusiasm for the service, but we’re told it’s not profitable.”.

In order to remedy the shortcomings identified and to ensure better management of drinking water services, the Direction Générale de l’Eau Potable, through the Direction du Service Public de l’Eau Potable, organised this international workshop on the monitoring and regulation of public drinking water services in rural areas of Burkina Faso. The aim is to define a common and shared vision of monitoring and regulation for efficient public drinking water services in rural areas. Specifically, the aim is to define a common and shared vision of monitoring and regulation based on a review of literature, presentations on the subject and feedback from national, regional and international experiences. In addition to participants from Burkina Faso, the workshop brings together experts from Mali, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya and Zambia who will share their experiences in monitoring and regulation of public drinking water services in rural areas.

Souro André Sanon, Director General of Drinking Water, said:

“Supervision and regulation are the mechanisms that must be put in place to monitor the day-to-day compliance of the operators responsible for providing the public drinking water service, i.e. the supply of drinking water to the population. The State must ensure that all those involved in the maintenance of the network and the day-to-day management of the installations fulfil their obligations. The aim of regulation is really to monitor, on a daily basis, the fact that each actor is playing its part so that, at the end of the day, people have access to drinking water.”

The conclusions and recommendations of this three-day workshop will help to define a roadmap and a clear, shared vision for monitoring and improving public drinking water services in rural areas of Burkina Faso.

Source: Justine Bonkoungou for Lefaso.net (French)

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