Drinking water infrastructure: France’s Saint-Gobain wins major order in Angola
French company Saint-Gobain Pam has won a contract to supply pipes for the Bita drinking water megaproject in Angola. Costing over a billion dollars, Bita is one of the largest drinking water projects currently underway in sub-Saharan Africa.
Good news for Saint-Gobain Pam. The French company has won an order to supply “all products” for the Bita drinking water project in Angola. This is one of the largest drinking water projects currently underway in Africa. As part of its contract, Saint-Gobain will supply a total of “15,000 tons of pipes, in medium and large diameters”, says the Pont-à-Mousson, France-based company.
“It is a great source of pride for all Pam’s teams to contribute to a project with such an impact on the daily lives of local residents,” the company’s social networks read. Contacted by Afrik21, the industrial company’s communications department explains that the equipment for “this water supply project will be supplied by Saint-Gobain Pam with French production origin restriction”.
World Bank financing
This means that “98% of the total products delivered by Saint-Gobain Pam for this project will be of French manufacture”, explains Laurent Piquard, the French industrial company’s communications director. So there will be no unemployment at the company’s five sites in Lorraine, in northeastern France. This equipment will be crucial to the implementation of the Bita drinking water megaproject, for which another French company is providing its expertise.
In 2021, the public company Empresa Publica de Aguas de Luanda (Epal) has chosen Suez and its partners Mota Engil and Soares da Costa from Portugal to implement the project. Among the infrastructures planned to reinforce the water supply to the Angolan capital Luanda is a pumping station in the Kwanza River, which will enable raw water to be transported by pipeline to a new drinking water plant with a capacity of 260,000 m3 per day. This will be one of the largest drinking water plants in sub-Saharan Africa, serving no fewer than 3.8 million people in the province of Luanda.
The project also involves the installation of new drinking water distribution networks in several peri-urban areas, including Bita, Cabolombo, Mundial and Ramiros, “most of which are poor”, explains the World Bank Group, which is financing the project to the tune of $500 million through its subsidiary, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Bird). With an overall cost of over one billion dollars, the project is also supported by the French Public Investment Bank (Bpifrance).
Cover photo: By AFRIK21
