Evaluation of the Project for Improving Commercial and Technical Performance (PACT) of the Guinean Water Company (SEG)
Guinea, nicknamed “the water tower of West Africa,” has abundant water resources. However, in 2023, only 64% of the population had access to a source of drinking water, and barely 23% to a service managed safely according to WHO standards. In Conakry, rapid urbanization and an aging network in constant degradation cause significant losses and frequent supply disruptions.
The Commercial and Technical Performance Improvement Project (PACT), designed by the Water Company of Guinea (SEG) and funded by the French Development Agency (AFD), was deployed between 2018 and 2025 to address these challenges. It is structured around two components, which aim to:
- Minimize water losses in one of Conakry’s municipalities, in order to generate additional revenue for SEG’s local agencies;
- Secure production across the country by renewing electromechanical equipment at 15 SEG production centers.
As part of its accountability mission, the AFD selected the Phoenix – SETEC Hydratec consortium to conduct the evaluation of this project. More specifically, our consortium sought to answer the following questions:
- Did the chosen operating method facilitate or, conversely, make the project implementation more difficult?
- Was SEG’s support strategy effective, relevant, and anchored in its organizational and institutional context?
- Were the renewed equipment suitable for SEG’s capacities, and can they be operated sustainably?
Our approach, combining document review, interviews with all stakeholders, focus groups, questionnaires, and field observations, enabled us to collect all the elements needed to answer these questions. Our objective is for our conclusions and recommendations to provide insights to improve future projects undertaken by the AFD and other donors in the water sector in Guinea and perhaps elsewhere.
