To understand the water crisis affecting Guinea, these two youtubers traveled to its capital city, Conakry. This is what they saw.
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00:00In the capital of Conakry, there are 4 million people and only half of the population has access to water
00:04while Guinea is designated as the water castle of West Africa.
00:22There are three major rivers that take their source in Guinea.
00:25There is also a rainy season that is abundant
00:27but the problem is that this water cannot be distributed to the population.
00:31The first time we really noticed the lack of water
00:33was when we shot in a village in the Rathoma neighborhood
00:35with Adama, a person who is in our documentary
00:38and who actually shows us a tap at her house where the water has not been flowing for 10 years.
00:41You don't have a connection? You don't have water here?
00:43No, not at all. So it's thanks to the neighbors who have the wells and everything.
00:46There, in fact, we are in front of a concession of a private individual
00:50who made him a well that connected to the network
00:53and suddenly, out of kindness, he lets all the inhabitants of the neighborhood
00:55be able to come to his house to fill the water bottles.
00:57And so, as we see here, all the water bottles are there.
01:00We make a stock, in fact.
01:01Yes, that's it.
01:02With the wells, the bottles and everything.
01:04Everything is calculated, in fact.
01:06We wash ourselves with small buckets
01:09so as not to waste water.
01:11Next to that, people in the street organize themselves.
01:12So you can see water carriers.
01:14They carry 20 liters of water bottles.
01:15They have more or less 20 per cart.
01:17And they walk around the city of Konakry to distribute water to the inhabitants.
01:20So again, this is proof that the infrastructure is not enough
01:23so that everyone can have it.
01:26Konakry, Konakry
01:34The water is drained into lakes.
01:36In particular, the lake of Sonfonia.
01:37It's a fairly recent factory that they built
01:39but it can't work
01:40because this lake is too polluted.
01:42In fact, they can't drain the water from the lake
01:43because people threw too many things in it.
01:45There is no waste treatment service.
01:47So if you want, people throw their waste on the ground
01:49and it's not at all a reproach
01:50because they have no other way to treat their waste, in fact.
01:52The second problem caused by this pollution
01:54is that it infiltrates the canals
01:56which lead the water to the population.
01:57And that's why we find microorganisms in the water
02:00and also waste
02:01which causes a real health problem
02:03for the people who drink it afterwards.
02:11For example, the Society of Water of Guinea,
02:13which manages access to water in Konakry,
02:15its director, Mamadou Diouldé Diallo,
02:17is suspected of having embezzled up to 10 million euros
02:20of public money from the SEG.
02:22And so, we did a lot of research on this
02:25and we decided to meet him
02:26to talk to him about it, to know where it was.
02:29I saw that since 2016,
02:31between 2011 and 2016,
02:33there were 68 billion Guinean francs that had been embezzled.
02:36Are you aware of that?
02:37No, no, no. These are articles.
02:39These are false articles that have been
02:42disseminated like that.
02:43The big problem with this subject
02:44is that there is not a single reason,
02:46a single fault
02:47that can be pointed out and corrected.
02:50It's a pile of a lot of things
02:51and a lot of factors at the same time.
02:53We can cite, for example,
02:54the lack of investment of the country in the water sector.
02:57We can also cite the overpopulation of the city
02:59that happened in a few years,
03:01which doubled in terms of population.
03:02All these factors make that there is a lack of access to water in Konakry.
03:06And in reality,
03:07Guinea should be able to correct them all at once
03:10to be able to give water to its population.
03:11And it's a challenge that will have to be taken up.
03:14And we don't know yet if it's going to be possible.
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