In wake of Cape drought, Ivory Coast city in dire straits

EARLIER this year, Cape Town grabbed the world’s headlines as it careened towards a water armageddon.

Crippled by a three-year-long drought, the South African city braced for a complete shutdown of domestic water supplies.

In the event, Cape Town dodged the immediate bullet. But another African city has had far less luck – and much less attention for its ordeal.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said an employee of the state-run water distribution company, Sodeci.

Located in grassy savanna around 400km from the Ivorian economic capital of Abidjan, Bouake is a city of more than half million souls, with a million more in surrounding territory.

In addition, the dammed lake that supplies 70% of the city’s water has run dry.

One factor is an unprecedented drought that has gripped the region – a phenomenon in line with expert warnings about climate change.

But another, says the territory’s director for water affairs, Seydou Coulibaly, is the impact of unregulated sand quarrying, which has altered the course of waterways feeding the reservoir.

In a bid to bring some relief, the city has begun drilling wells to obtain fresh water.

“We have finished a first operation and we’ll be moving on to the second site in two to three hours,” Hassane Cousteau Cissoko, director of the drilling firm Foraci, said last Thursday in the Houphouetville district.

In all, 10 wells will be linked by pipes to a Sodeci water tower, which will then be able to distribute two million litres of water per day.

This will “relieve the population” but is far from enough to replace the usual supply from the Loka dam, Cissoko said.

Heavy rain fell one night last week.

No rain has fallen since, but in any event rainwater and tanks “are insufficient”, said a resident, Mariam Konate. “The government must deal with this problem head-on.”