New loans from French agency to improve drinking water program in northern Morocco

The north African country, Morocco is going to receive a loan of €50 million and a subsidy of €1 million from L'Agence Française de Developpement to secure access to drinking water in the northern provinces of the Kingdom.

The agreements were signed on Wednesday, July 17 in Morocco's capital city, Rabat between Moroccan National Office for Electricity and Water (ONEE) and French Development Agency (AFD). Basically, these two organizations have signed two loan agreements – one for €56 million and another for €10.7 million.

ONEE's ongoing programme, which is aimed to improve access to drinking water in northern Morocco, will receive the fund from AFD. The programme is intended to ensure access to safe drinking water in the province of Nador, Taounate, Al Hoceima and Driouch's both rural and urban areas. The programme is expected to benefit 150,000 people as the rural areas in the country's northern provinces experience 86 percent access to drinking water in comparison to the national average of 96.5 percent. AFD is giving €1 million grant to conduct studies and take capacity building actions.

This partnership between AFD and ONEE is expected to generalize and give access to drinking water for residents of the northern regions in Morocco. It will contribute to shorten inequalities in access to public services by solidifying the region's resilience to climate change, while improving the quality of drinking water service.

On the other hand, the project is planned to mobilize perennial surface resources, namely the Bouhouda and Asfalou dams (Taounate province) to sustain with the augmented reduction of underground resources and the significant reduction in rainfall expected in the coming years.

"This project contributes to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6 – a positive impact is expected both on health and on the economic and social development of the zone," Mihoub Mezouaghi, AFD's director said. "It is also about contributing to the preservation of the water resource through the reduction of leaks, the improvement of network efficiency and the mobilization of sustainable resources," he added.

Morocco, like most nations in north Africa suffers from water crisis and frequent droughts. Shrinking reservoirs in Morocco is likely to spark the next 'day zero' water crisis. According to a study revealed by the World Resource Institute in 2018, the total surface area of this country's second largest reservoir Al-Massira has shrunk by over 60 percent in the last couple of years.

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