Review of the water sector in Ivory Coast

With an urbanization rate of 55% and an urban population growth rate of 3.7% per year, Ivory Coast is one of the most urbanized countries in Africa. In addition, about 200 towns outside Abidjan suffer from a water supply deficit of more than 50% and more than 200 sub-prefecture capitals are not supplied by the public drinking water service. Therefore, substantial investment is needed to ensure satisfactory quality water services for the urban population.

In terms of rural water supply, more than 8,000 water points should be added to the 20,800 existing ones to ensure good coverage of the rural territory, again leading to significant investment needs.

Faced with these requirements, the portfolio of investment projects, which would amount to more than CFA 1,500 billion, is necessarily very ambitious, but its financial sustainability is not assured. Moreover, even the achievement of a “small balance” of operations is impossible today in a context where no tariff increase has been achieved since 2004.

In order to think about a future sustainable financing scheme for the entire water sector, the Ivory Coast government has entrusted the consortium formed by Artelia, PwC and Phoenix to carry out a strategic study to identify all cost optimisation possibilities and all sources of financing. Phœnix is in charge, on the one hand, of ONEP’s organisational audit and institutional proposals for the sector and, on the other hand, of financial projections for the sector based on modelling.

This study is to be completed in 6 months, so that the new government arriving in October will have all the elements in hand to make informed decisions.