048-i. Advice on ToR: EIA for electricity programme - Mali

The NCEA issued an advisory review of the EIA for an investment programme undertaken by a private service provider in drinking water and electricity. It addressed a number of critical points which should be taken into account in the EIA report.

Advisory reports and other documents

Significant details

Electricity and water provision in Mali has been privatized in a process that was supervised by the World Bank. A concession has been given to a private company to supply electricity and water to a number of urban areas. Two of the conditions attached to this concession were that interruptions in service supply should be limited and that the number of water and electricity consumers should double in five years time. In order to fulfil these conditions, the company has elaborated an investment programme with two objectives: to develop an emergency plan in order to deal with any imperfections in the existing infrastructure, and to expand the existing infrastructure.

For this investment plan, an EIA was undertaken. The NCEA was asked to review the EIA. In its advisory review (in French), some of the main observations were:

• There is no clear definition of the roles of the state and the private company;
• An evaluation of institutional capacity needed is missing;
• There is no good evaluation of health impacts of pollution in the Niger river, which is a primary source for potable water;
• An evaluation of health effects of increased use of tap water is not included;
• A system for environmental management on all activity sites is missing;
• There is no thorough analysis of the existing environmental context and degree of pollution.

Parties involved

Members of the working group

Chair: Aad van der Velden
Technical secretary: Reinoud Post

Proponent and Component Authority

Further details

Country: Mali

Last modified: 13 May 2019