Although the rate of access to water and sanitation services in Morocco is satisfactory, rural areas still lag behind, facing a lack of financial, technical and organisational means to develop these services in the douars (villages) of their territory. Water access infrastructure often exists, but the rural communes that own it, and the user associations to whom they delegate management, have neither the know-how nor the equipment needed to run these services sustainably.

It is in this context that HAMAP-Humanitaire, in partnership with the local association « AKHIAM » for the socio-economic development of the Imilchil valley, designed and supported a project to strengthen the operational and organisational capacity of 16 village water management committees working in 16 douars (villages) of the Imilchil valley, in the Moroccan High Atlas.

The local context

The 16 villages are among the highest and most isolated in Morocco, located in the mountains of the Moroccan High Atlas between 2,200 and 2,400 metres above sea level. Together they are home to around 15,000 people. The climate is freezing in winter (down to -10°) and socio-economic indicators are among the lowest in the Kingdom, causing large-scale emigration of young people, particularly those seeking higher education and better economic prospects.

As regards access to drinking water, each village has a supply system fed by a borehole between 25 and 120 m deep, a reservoir, a gravity-fed distribution network and household connections. Since these small networks were commissioned in the early 2000s, however, residents have seen the facilities deteriorate rapidly because of poor management and maintenance. Managing the networks was left to village management committees on a self-managed basis, without suitable training or equipment and without financial or technical support from state services to meet their needs. The networks are maintained by patching them up with rudimentary and unsuitable means: most often simple inner tubes or salvaged rubber. Bills are issued and collected erratically and poorly recorded, and many disputes set residents against the committees, which are unable to remedy the growing number of serious faults on the networks.


What was done

  • A diagnostic and awareness campaign was carried out.

These meetings made it possible to assess the level of administrative and accounting management of the 16 associations concerned, which leaves a great deal to be desired (no bank account, no file to track invoices, no renewal of members and so on). These inter-association exchanges also prompted people to share experience, which lends itself to pooling good practice. At the same time, each village designated a focal person to be trained, in particular in plumbing.

  • A « tailor-made » training programme was run
    • Legal and administrative training for the associations: knowledge of members' legal obligations, the need to produce minutes of meetings and financial reports, to hold general assemblies and to open a bank account, the obligation to use appropriate equipment for connections and repairs, and the handling of disputes and legal procedure
    • Digital training in budget management and invoice tracking: each association was given a computer with a printer. These units come with simple software suited to easy use for entering and tracking invoices, archiving, and tracing income and expenditure. Training in its use was organised for each association and a user guide was also provided. AKHIAM provides ongoing support to associations that have difficulty in practice.
    • Technical training in checking connections and carrying out maintenance (including leak repair): one plumber per village was trained and equipped to work effectively on simple jobs, notably household connection techniques and the detection and repair of leaks on the networks. To give them the means to act, 16 cases containing the essential basic tools and materials (pliers, blowtorch, drill and so on) for plumbers working on the network were handed over to the associations. In parallel, a stock of materials for maintaining and renewing the distribution networks is available at each association, discouraging individuals from buying poor quality materials and making makeshift repairs. Each association has 160 metres of HDPE pipe and 10 individual volumetric meters, along with the fittings needed for connection (couplings, elbows and so on). The income from selling materials to individuals will be reinvested in building up new stock. For leak detection, 3 detection devices were provided to the 16 associations, and two submersible pumps are also available to the associations in the event of a breakdown.

Conclusions and results achieved

In the short term, the 16 associations have benefited from a solid training programme giving them the basics they need to organise the service and to work technically on the networks. Basic tools and equipment, digital and physical, are now available in the villages to save the water supply systems from a foreseeable collapse.

In the longer term, thanks to its strong local roots, embodied by the leading association of the Imilchil valley, the project has succeeded in bringing along all the stakeholders and authorities present in the area (the communes of Imilchil and Bouzmou, the Governor of Midelt Province, the province's water services, representatives of ONEE) to set up a shared framework for reflection and action to discuss water management, built around the valley's new Water Council.

It is also worth noting that, as a knock-on effect, some priority works identified within this project were funded by the Province itself: the extension of the network in two of the target villages and the renovation of an unusable borehole in a third.

As regards the HAMAP and AKHIAM partnership, a replication of this project in further villages of the valley is being designed together on the basis of the conclusions summarised here.

The project was carried out with the support of: