The water’s flowing in the Dî irrigation area

In April 2014, in the Sourou valley in Burkina Faso, Sogea-Satom (VINCI Construction) handed over the Di project, a vast irrigation network which enables 2,300 hectares of land to be made fertile. It comprises 5 km of channels bringing in river water, 7 pumping stations (equipped with 15 spiral pumps) and 115 km of channels equipped to deliver the exact amount of water required to the plots of land. Sogea-Satom recruited half of its some 600 construction workers locally. The company introduced a systematic health & safety plan for the project, an AIDS prevention programme and procedures for the management of waste. 600 trees have been planted to replace those that had to be felled. Worth $63.5 million, the project was funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US government agency supporting poverty reduction programmes in low-income countries.