Development for equitable and sustainable access to drinking water in disadvantaged communities in the suburban municipalities of Kinshasa, Congo DR

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has a high potential in water resources. Despite these freshwater potentials, more than 75% of the population does not have access to drinking water. The situation is very worrying in the city of Kinshasa, the capital of DRC, which has more than 16 million inhabitants, 75% of population live in the suburban communes of the city, to which more than 70% of the population does not have access to drinking water supply from the National Water Company. Notwithstanding, the presence of some urban rivers/sources and groundwater are the main sources of water for households. Indeed, access to water is mainly through undeveloped wells dug manually. Our recent studies revealed that 90% of these water sources for domestic use have a high bacteriological contamination exceeding WHO regulation. Therefore, peri-urban communes of Kinshasa are known for recurrent epidemics, mainly of water-borne diseases, including gastrointestinal diseases, typhoid fever, cholera and other diarrheal diseases.

The main objective of this project is to provide drinking water to the population of these municipalities by treating water contaminated by the sodium hypochlorite solution produced locally, using WATA technology developed over the last ten years by Antenna Foundation in Geneva.