Water beats poverty: Oxfam's longest pipeline in DR Congo

The Fizi territory in South Kivu region is the home of the beautiful Mitumba mountain ranges and deep valleys. It is also the most inaccessible areas in DR Congo.

Women have to walk long distances in search of clean water often putting themselves in harm's way.

Despite being the most water-rich country in Africa, DR Congo struggles to provide enough to thousands of people living particularly in inaccessible areas such as the Fizi territory. With little access to clean water, families are often forced to rely on dirty sources such as seasonal rivers making them vulnerable to deadly water-borne diseases such as cholera.

Rebeka goes to the well twice a day to fetch water. It’s an open well where groundwater is handed out for the villagers’ use. She has to get up very early (at four in the morning) to fetch water, and she goes there again at the end of the day. It’s a 20-minute walk from her house. She can carry 20 liters of water in the jerry can. Sometimes she returns empty-handed because the well is dry, which means that she has to go back once more that same day. She knows that the water from the well is not healthy for her but it’s the only option she has close-by. 

A year ago, Oxfam started the construction of a 96-kilometers-long gravity-fed water supply system, that taps into a river source in the Mitumba mountain ranges. Five water platforms will also be constructed, each to hold a water tank that is 6.5 meters in diameter with an average height of 1.5 - 2 m and with capacity for 70,000 liters. As far as we know, this is by far the most extensive project ever implemented by Oxfam and probably by all NGO’s, not to mention that it is in one of the most remote areas of DRC.

Oxfam started the construction of a 96-kilometers-long gravity-fed water supply system a year ago, that taps into a river source in the Mitumba mountain ranges. As far as we know, this is by far the most extensive project ever implemented by Oxfam and probably by all NGO’s, not to mention that it is in one of the most remote areas of DRC.

Oxfam started the construction of a 96-kilometers-long gravity-fed water supply system a year ago, that taps into a river source in the Mitumba mountain ranges. As far as we know, this is by far the most extensive project ever implemented by Oxfam and probably by all NGO’s, not to mention that it is in one of the most remote areas of DRC.

Once completed, the pipeline will provide safe clean water to 18,230 internally displaced persons and 81,831 vulnerable host population across four main surrounding towns of Fizi, Sebele, Katanga, and Malinde, in a zone endemic with cholera outbreaks.