Tag: Senegal

World Water Forum 9: “We need to act and now, because there is no green without blue and life is blue”

Short reflection by Maimouna Diop, a Senegalese Young Water Professional who chaired Session 2a4 “Rural Water Supply Management Models” at the World Water Forum 2022, on behalf of RWSN.

Maimouna Diop, Ing. MBA, PMP

This forum is definitely the most impactful ever. Dakar has been the capital of water for 6 days.

Young people have been mobilized around the world to show their commitments. We will live through difficult times in the coming decades: resources will become scarce, demography will experience an exponential rise and funding will be difficult to mobilize due to the global crisis we are already experiencing. The expected action is therefore human and it is now. We must be at the heart of politics by investing ourselves intellectually and physically.

Just a quick reminder : issues related to water control and food security in Senegal were discussed 39 years ago, during a session at the National Assembly on April 14, 1983, with the late Minister Samba Yela Diop (May his soul rest in peace). It simply means that water security is nothing new and that our elders knew how to sound the alarm at an early stage. We have to be as benevolent as our elders to identify new challenges to be met in the coming years.

Understanding the issues related to water will ensure that appropriate decisions can be made and for future generations.

We need to act and now, because there is no green without blue and life is blue.

Session Presentations:

3 ways countries can improve water supplies in small towns

by Fadel Ndaw, World Bank Global Water Practice – reblogged from http://blogs.worldbank.org/water/3-ways-countries-can-improve-water-supplies-small-towns

water-small-town-bolivia

A public faucet that serves 1,000 families in el Alto, Bolivia. Photo credit: Stephan Bachenheimer / World Bank

Small towns* typically have not been well served by national or regional water utilities. Decentralization has become increasingly widely adopted, but even if local governments at the small town level have the power to operate a water utility, they often lack the capital and skills to do so. In response, some local governments and public institutions concentrate improvements on upgrading public utilities’ operations or strengthening community based management. In other cases, they choose to bring in the private sector knowledge of how to get clean water and sanitation services to more people more efficiently, affordably or sustainably. There is no one solution to addressing often very complex water and sanitation challenges.

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The closer you are, the more sustainable it gets

by Jochen Rudolph, African Development Bank (AfDB)

Through its Rural Water and Sanitation Initiative (RWSSI) the African Development Bank (AfDB)  was the first donor to support the Senegalese initiative “PEPAM” (Programme Eau Potable et Assainissement du Millénaire) in 2004 and has maintained the close partnership ever since. Looking back at the PEPAM experience, we find that strong and sustained commitment to improving rural water supply and sanitation in Senegal has resulted in more facilities than were originally budgeted for being installed and, as a result, has improved the health and quality of life for a large number of beneficiary villages.

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