The first ever NUMA water bottling plant in Burkina Faso is paving the way for big dreams by providing reliable access to affordable, safe water in the town of Banfora. The project, joint funded through Water4’s partnership with the Conrad Hilton Foundation, WaterAid, OneDrop, and IRC, gives us the opportunity to pilot the sales of bottled water in an area where people depend on it due to weak municipal water supply.
Water4 partner Access Development Burkina Faso, along with the Mayor of Banfora, hosted a grand opening of the country’s first NUMA water bottling plant on Friday, February 22. The celebration was attended by a large crowd from the community who enjoyed a tour of the plant and a water tasting.Â
Banfora is home to few affordable, safe water options. Municipal water is affordable, but unreliable and often unsafe. Safe water is available in small bottles, but the high price makes it out of reach for most people. The NUMA bottling plant offers people living on less than $5 a day the opportunity to buy high quality drinking water at a tenth of the cost of other options.Â
“We’re excited to leverage partnerships to pilot new ways of providing safe water sustainably in more and more contexts,” said Matt Hangen, President & CEO of Water4. “Pilot programs like this one in Burkina Faso help prove the scalability of our model and get us one step closer to seeing the water crisis eradicated.”
The bottling plant has the capacity to filter and bottle over 1,000 5-gallon water bottles per day – supplying the greater Banfora area with reliable, safe and affordable drinking water. The plant includes innovative ultrafiltration technology and real-time monitoring, and is a boost to the local economy by creating water bottling, sales, and delivery jobs. Once at full capacity, profits from the bottling plant will sustain the system and be poured back into the region to fund wells for people living in rural areas.Â
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing the water crisis. That’s why Water4 and our partners are committed to doing whatever it takes to find the best, most affordable safe water solution for every context, and we won’t stop until the water crisis is history.
Please join us in celebrating the launch of this bottling plant and the impact it will have on the people of Burkina Faso!Â
