Angola’s Climate Resilience and Water Security project (RECLIMA) is set to rehabilitate 33 water abstraction and distribution systems across the Cutato, Menongue, Cuchi and Longa municipalities of Cubango province, in a $1 million intervention co-financed by the World Bank and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
Works spanning 24 months formally began on Thursday, with funding channelled through the two multilateral institutions under a programme aimed at restoring rural water supply systems that have fallen into disuse.
Manuel Freitas, RECLIMA’s rural water specialist, said the systems targeted by the rehabilitation had been out of service for more than four years due to vandalism and mechanical breakdowns.
Carlos Figueiredo, a monitoring and evaluation specialist at the Project Coordination Unit of the Ministry of Energy and Water, announced that the treatment capacity of the water treatment station at the village of Missongo, in Menongue, will be doubled from 11 to 22 cubic metres.
Figueiredo said the expansion project, scheduled to begin in 2027, is designed to extend Menongue’s distribution network by a further 125 kilometres as part of a broader integrated sanitation and water-resource management plan.
He added that the works will be guided by a groundwater potential study and will include the rehabilitation of three existing water-pumping stations as well as the construction of a new one.
João Bonifácio Cassanga, the provincial deputy governor for technical services and infrastructure, said the project’s implementation would significantly improve access to safe drinking water for rural communities across the province.
Cassanga described the initiative as a major public health and quality-of-life intervention, noting that many residents still travel long distances to collect water from rivers, lakes, wells and hand-dug cisterns.
He called on contractors and site supervisors to maintain rigorous standards so that the completed works would be functional, sustainable and capable of meeting the long-term needs of the communities they serve.
Rodrigues Bongue, chairman of the board of Cubango’s state water and sanitation utility, said the Menongue treatment station’s current capacity of 11,000 cubic metres per day is inadequate for a municipality of approximately 400,000 inhabitants.
Bongue said the utility currently serves 1,500 customers in the urban area, collecting an average of 15 million kwanzas per month in revenue.
He disclosed, however, that monthly consumer debt stands at 16 million kwanzas — exceeding average monthly collections and pointing to a structural billing and recovery challenge for the utility.
RECLIMA is a Government of Angola initiative, operationalised by the Ministry of Energy and Water, with financing from the World Bank and the AFD. Its overarching goal is to restore the functionality and improve the long-term sustainability of rural water supply systems that are currently inoperative or operating at severely reduced capacity.
The programme covers the rehabilitation and repair of hydraulic infrastructure, the recovery of damaged or vandalised equipment, and the reinforcement of community-based management and operational mechanisms — all aimed at ensuring the continuity and quality of water services delivered to rural populations.
Source: ANGOP / Original article: https://www.angop.ao/noticias/sociedade/reclima-reabilita-33-sistemas-de-agua-no-cubango/
