Water is life – and this is particularly true in a Sahel country like Burkina Faso. With population growth of about 3 percent a year, this resource is becoming increasingly scarce. This trend is intensified by the incipient climate change that due to diminished rainfalls makes the usage of surface water more and more complicated. This gives rise to conflict potential within the country itself, and also with neighbouring countries. In the long term, integrated water resource management (IWRM) is therefore increasingly important for ensuring optimal water use within the transboundary water catchment areas.

German-Burkina Faso cooperation is accordingly promoting the sustainable supply of safe drinking water for the undersupplied urban and rural population. The framework for this is the concept of sustainable integrated water management operating at the macro, meso and micro levels, i.e. sectoral policy and legal framework, intermediary organisations and users.

The thematic priority areas are water supply, wastewater and sewage disposal, and water resource management. Regional priority areas in the programme are the water catchment area of the Mouhoun, and urban water management.

Concrete points addressed are:

• supporting the implementation of the national water and wastewater plan
• improving the sectoral conditions by supporting the country’s sector reform and the national water resource management
• supporting the competence transfer in the water sector from central to municipal level
• strengthening the support capacities on the integrated water resource management at meso and micro levels
• identifying the user conflicts at micro level
• supplying the population in urban marginal areas (300,000 people live in the area around the capital Ouagadougou without urban infrastructure)
• assisting secondary centres, particularly in the water catchment area of the Mouhoun, improving the rural water supply in the priority regions in line with resource availability and willingness to pay
• eliminating serious wastewater problems in the country’s cities
• supporting the donor harmonisation and the sectoral dialogue

The programme “Drinking water and sanitation programme in small and medium-sized cities“ is currently being implemented as a cooperative project of the KfW and GTZ.

Construction of the infrastructure for urban drinking water supply is largely being promoted through financial cooperation with the KfW Entwicklungsbank (KfW development bank).

Burkina Faso-German cooperation is already proving successful. For example, ONEA the national water authority that has been supported from the German Technical Cooperation since many years and is now cited as one of the best-managed establishments in the region, and has covered its costs over the past ten years. The capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture, responsible for the water sector, and of the local authorities have been strengthened in such a way as to enable them to manage the process independently.