The historic town of Niono, Mali, located in the Niger River Basin on the edge of Sub-Saharan Africa, is home to over 50,000 people. The town’s economy is largely agricultural as a result of its strategic location in the irrigated rice cultivating region in this West African nation. The irrigation system was designed by the French and constructed by Malians in the 1940’s. The regional authority, Office du Niger, owns the land and maintains the canal system.
Niono has serious sanitation and flooding problems due to the existence of a drainage channel, called the “collecteur de pluies” (rainwater collector) which floods during the rainy season. The original downstream outflow of the drainage channel has been effectively filled in by the unsanctioned addition of new rice fields. The lack of waste management and proper sanitation, combined with the flooding of this ditch which runs for over 2km through the center of town, creates a sanitary disaster where human waste from open pit latrines, municipal trash and animal waste are all mixed together to form, in the rainy season, a polluted lake and in the dry season a series of stagnant pools and trash piles. The flooding has also undermined and collapsed mud homes, killing some Malian citizens. In addition, many of the shallow wells in the town have been contaminated by the flood waters.
