The wells bringing hope in the desert

Water has long been at the centre of conflict in the northern regions of Mali, in West Africa. This vast water-scarce area spans 827,000 square kilometres (320,000 square miles) between the Sahara in the north and the Sahel in the south – in total, about two-thirds of the national territory. “One can travel tens or even hundreds of kilometers without seeing a single water facility. And when there is water, it is not of good quality,” says Almahady Cissé, the head of Cri de Cœur, a local NGO working in northern Mali.

The causes of the conflict in Mali are complex, but one thing is certain: water shortages raise tensions, and in turn tensions make access to water more difficult.

In some parts of Mali it rains only once a year, especially in the Saharan region. The Sahel receives more rain, but not evenly – some areas are prone to flooding, while others do not receive enough rain. “People who live in the places where there is less water seek to take advantage of the water elsewhere, which sometimes causes conflicts,” says Cissé.

In the north of the country, economic activities put additional pressure on water shortages, straining tensions. “In these regions, people are either a farmer in a village, or a nomadic herder,” says Cissé. “So conflicts arise around the water plants between these community groups.” A lack of water can lead to brawls, sometimes resulting in loss of life.

Today local tensions have escalated over water resources until humanitarian workers are no longer able to access these remote regions. “Insecurity is a hindrance for humanitarian workers because to do a drilling, you need a team of surveyors, a team of hydraulic engineers to do geological studies,” says Cissé. “When these teams travel, they are kidnapped, often people die. So the conflict worsened a situation that was already precarious.” Some are still making efforts to carry out drilling in hard-to-reach areas, but it is not meeting the need for water, he adds.

The tensions compound the need for a local solution. One solution that has been trialled since 2013 is micro-wells. These are boreholes are about six metres deep, and can be used to raise groundwater through simple containers, such as buckets, or using a manual or motorised pump.

In rural areas, the technique adopted to make a borehole is manual drilling, also known as “Tare – Tare” which means “welcome”, in two of Mali’s languages, Bambara and Fulani. Manual drilling costs about seven times less than mechanical drilling, but it is as labour-intensive as it sounds. The methods used to dig out the wells include “percussion”, which involves striking the ground rock with a pick, chisel or the end of a pipe, “rotation”, which involves grinding or tearing at the surface, or when available using a water-jet to blast downwards through the earth.

Once a borehole is in place, its success also depends on how it is managed. Local organisations including Cri de Cœur aim to promote governance by educating people on the management of existing boreholes and water. This includes, for example, ensuring that the group managing the well is impartial, and serves all communities using it – nomadic pastoralists and village farmers alike.

Climate change is part of the water problem in the northern regions, which face the advance of the Sahara Desert. “Areas that used to be green are less and less green today. In the riverbed, the areas that were navigable are no longer navigable now because they are overrun with sand,” says Ousmane Maïga, a resident of Gao who operates a small vegetable garden.

Sedentary communities in the north can no longer cultivate well, he says. “It’s raining late, that’s why people are often forced to water their plants. And when they water and the plants start to grow, there are suddenly surprising floods that destroy all,” says Maïga, adding that the nomadic pastoralists are in the same situation. “All the communities are affected by poverty.”

In Maïga’s neighbourhood, a micro-well has given easier access to water, so he does not have to travel miles to fetch it from the river. But while boreholes improve access, they aren’t enough to fully relieve water stress. The insecurity in the area leads people to cut down the remaining trees to make a living selling them for firewood, says Maïga. Because there are fewer trees, the soil isn’t able to retain as much water, which in turn risks exacerbating existing conflicts.

The persistence of wider conflict imposed by the insurgency that began in 2012 has provoked a flow of internally displaced persons in the Mopti region further south, putting more pressure on water resources. As of June 2020, there were 250,000 internally displaced people in Mopti and its surrounding area, according to the UN.

Dutch researcher Christine van Wijk-Sijbesma from the International Water and Sanitation Center writes that in the family, cultural factors, such as isolation, household composition and the distribution of work influence the distribution of chore of collecting water. “Girls get involved in this activity from an early age, depending on the workload and mobility of their mothers,” she writes. “In polygamous households, the more difficult tasks tend to be delegated to the younger women.”

A manual pump installed in March 2020 in Dialangou allows residents to avoid having to use water from the pond near the village, whose troubled waters were a source of major health problems, including diarrheal diseases such as cholera and schistosomiasis.

So far the micro-wells seem to be working. The water from the Dialangou borehole was analysed by the Mopti Regional Water Laboratory this year and the results showed that water met the required quality standards in Mali.

A total of 161 boreholes have now been drilled in the Mopti region using the manual technique. But the scale of the challenge remaining is still huge. Nationally, almost a quarter of the population does not have access to clean water, according to the international NGO Water Aid.

Local authorities, communities and NGOs working to create micro-wells are up against constant challenges. The more an area is in need of a well, the greater local tensions are likely to be, making its construction more difficult. “In some areas, it is impossible to do anything given the insecurity that reigns,” says Cissé.