Rabat – The French Development Agency (AFD) will loan MAD1.05 billion (€100 million) to Morocco’s RADEEM and RADEETA through two separate agreements.
Moroccan state media on Tuesday reported that the two agreements intend to facilitate access to sanitation and drinking water services for more than 1.8 million people living in the autonomous water companies’ utility territories.
These territories include: RADEEJ (El Jadida), RADEEL (Larache), RADEET (Beni Mellal), RADEETA (Taza), and RADEM (Meknes).
The AFD’s Mihoub Mezouaghi signed these agreements alongside RADEM’s Mohamed Amerzag, RADEETA’s Moulay El Mehdi Rachid and France’s ambassador to Morocco Helene Le Gal.
The program includes funds for several types of investment, construction, extension, or rehabilitation. These concern drinking water production units, pumping stations, water supply and distribution pipes. Additionally, they can be used to maintain reservoirs, wastewater and rainwater collectors, and storm drains.
The investments further covers network rehabilitation and optimization, to combat leaks and improve water supply, as well as modernizing and digitizing the company’s operating systems.
Read also: Morocco Allocates $260 Million to Secure Water Supply
These two agreements are not the only measures that Morocco is making to combat a country-wide drought crisis.
The National Office for Electricity and Drinking Water (ONEE) has launched a dam project on March 27, 2022, to secure the supply of drinking water in the Marrakech region.
The project was estimated to cost MAD 2.5 billion (€256 million), and is part of the National Program for the Supply of Drinking water and Irrigation 2020-2027, which has the goal to construct 120 dams by 2024 among other measures.
Morocco experienced its worst drought in three decades this year. Morocco faces the urgency of securing its water resources, as agriculture is one of the country’s most important industries, and in light of the global climate crisis.
