What is the fair price for drinking water and sanitation in Mauritania?
This is a question our team has been working on since November 2025. In Mauritania, as in several West African countries, drinking water and sanitation tariffs have not been revised for many years. At the same time, however, networks are expanding, ambitious investment programmes are being launched and operators are struggling to improve their performance. In this context, the issue of financing the sector, and in particular pricing, is becoming central to ensuring the sustainability of services.
Funded by AFD, following the IMF’s recommendations on reforming water and sanitation subsidies, Phoenix was commissioned to develop the financial model and carry out a tariff study for the urban water, rural water and collective sanitation sub-sectors. We are working in collaboration with all stakeholders: the Ministry of Water and Sanitation (MHA), the Regulatory Authority (ARE) and public operators (National Water Company, National Office for Rural Water Services, National Sanitation Office).
We began by conducting a diagnostic assessment, identifying, on the one hand, all the infrastructure, projects, and costs that constitute the supply, and on the other hand, all the factors influencing demand. Based on this, a technical and financial model was developed to estimate an average reference tariff, which was presented to the steering committee at the end of January. The work now consists of proposing several tariff structure scenarios that reconcile social equity and financial viability. Drawing on our extensive experience in tariff studies for the water sector in Burkina Faso, Benin, and Senegal, among others, we were able to benchmark tariff schedules applied in neighboring countries and other regions of the world to inform our analysis.
Such tariff reforms are essential to reduce the sub-sectors’ dependence on public subsidies – at least for the operation and maintenance of infrastructure – while ensuring equity and strengthening governance in the sector.
📸 : Bareina, Mauritania, Ferdinand Reus, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
