The Moroccan and German governments have signed an agreement worth US $7.6m for a new cooperation programme in the water sector.
The program dubbed “Rural Resilience” aims to improve the living conditions of rural populations, as well as their resilience in the face of climate change, which is reflected in the increasing water stress in this North African kingdom.
The “Rural Resilience” programme replaces the Integrated Water Resources Management Support Programme (AGIRE) implemented between 2008 and 2020, with a budget of US $27.8 million. According to the Moroccan authorities, who are satisfied with this cooperation with Berlin in the water sector, in 12 years, “AGIRE” has made it possible to provide the water basin agencies of the Tensift, Souss Massa and Oum Errabiaa with technical assistance for the development of mechanisms, procedures and tools for efficient, integrated and sustainable management of water resources.
Read:US $8.8m grant approved for African Water Facility
Project implementation
According to Abdelkader Amara, the Moroccan Minister of Public Works, the programme, which will run until 2023, will affect the areas of action of the Tensift, Sebou and Ziz-Guir-Rhéris water basin agencies. sources.
The program is being implemented jointly by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Moroccan Ministry of Energy, Mines, Water and the Environment. It has benefited the populations of the Tensift, Souss-Massa and Oum Er-Rbia catchment basins; several Moroccan universities, Moroccan experts in the water sector, as well as public institutions concerned with water resource management in Morocco.
There have been substantial improvement in access to water supply, and to a lesser extent to sanitation, over the past fifteen years in Morocco. Remaining challenges include a low level of wastewater treatment (only 13% of collected wastewater is being treated), lack of house connections in the poorest urban neighborhoods, and limited sustainability of rural systems (20 percent of rural systems are estimated not to function).
In 2005 a National Sanitation Program was approved that aims at treating 60% of collected wastewater and connecting 80% of urban households to sewers by 2020. The issue of lack of water connections for some of the urban poor is being addressed as part of the National Human Development Initiative, under which residents of informal settlements have received land titles and have fees waived that are normally paid to utilities in order to connect to the water and sewer network.