Mali is faced with fast-paced urbanisation, which is great for the people and for the country, but it also places a lot more pressure on the already strained water distribution system, especially in the capital city of Bamako.
One problem that is felt all over the globe is the wastage of water from old and leaking infrastructure, and it is no different in Africa, where the infrastructure is old, inadequate and mostly not maintained regularly, especially in the rural areas.
Lack of basic services and work prospects in rural Africa is the main reason for people moving to the cities, but the problem is in the number; the current infrastructure is not set up to handle a few thousand additional households.
It is with this in mind that the Malian Drinking Water Supply Management Company (SOMAGEP-SA), which provides around 160,000 customers in Mali has partnered with Itron in an effort to decrease “non-revenue†water.
Itron’s residential and commercial and industrial water metering automation and monitoring solutions will be used to solve the problem as well as software-as-a-service (SaaS) to perform analytics and meter data management, in order to decrease its water wastage.
A pilot project that was recently run in the dedicated district metered area (DMA) in Bamako, La Cité du Niger, showed results that were very encouraging within a short time-period; the water lost on a monthly basis was cut by around 50% and network efficiency was improved by around 14% which is what determined moving the project forward and the contract to deploy Itron solutions to a far bigger dedicated district metered area that manages approximately nearly 60,000 metering points.
The project aims to limit the amount of water wasted by using detailed meter data to monitor system performance, detect leaks and improve overall water efficiency. Mobile data collection will also be used for residential customers in order to streamline meter reading as well as to improve operational efficiency.
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