The Nex’Eau project was officially launched on 27 and 28 October 2021 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, during a workshop bringing together the project partners and local authorities. Nex’eau is an innovative project, based on the new “Humanitarian-development nexus” approach. This is a first in terms of access to water in Burkina Faso.
Conducted in the North and Central-North regions of the country, where the security situation is having significant impacts on populations’ living conditions and urban centres are facing the massive arrival of internally displaced populations, the Nex’Eau project is supporting public authorities to ensure the continuity and sustainability of drinking water and sanitation services in the communes concerned.
Drawing on the expertise and methodologies generated by emergency actions and development actions, it aims in particular to develop actions enabling better planning and coordination of emergency work, by implementing a medium to long-term strategy. The system proposed makes it possible to improve implementation of the action as the project progresses, via iterative evaluations on the one hand, as well as operational studies that can be used for future actions. During the launch workshop, the notion of a Comprehensive Emergency Master Plan (CEMP) was presented and discussed with participants to agree on its content and design stages. The CEMP is a tool for communal planning that takes account of the urgency generated by the arrival of displaced populations and the security crisis in the communes of intervention.
In this way, the teams at GRET, URD group, Solidarités Internationales and the National Office of Water and Sanitation (ONEA) are working on the construction and renovation of water networks, and on raising the awareness and strengthening the technical and institutional capacities of local authorities and service operators.
The Nex’Eau project is funded by Agence française de développement (AFD) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
