Maputo, July 8, 2025 (Lusa) - A new water pumping station will benefit 72,000 people in Maputo this month, responding to the emergency in the Mozambican capital, the Minister of Public Works announced on Monday.
With a cost of 3.8 million meticais (€50,000), the Roque mission pumping station is due to open on 31 July and will “respond to the challenges of most water supply services in most neighbourhoods of Maputo city,” the Minister of Public Works, Housing and Water Resources, Fernando Rafael, told the press when visiting the site on Monday.
With “about 95%” of the work completed, this is considered a “strategic infrastructure” that will join the other two, Intaca and Laulane, all in Maputo, and also enhance pressure management, Fernando Rafael stressed.
“It will increase water production capacity by about 30,000 cubic metres per day. This is very good because it responds to the emergency that we previously faced in the water sector, where we depended on water from the Intaca distribution centre,” he explained.
The Roque mission pumping station, which is already in the experimental phase, will not only boost water availability in the country’s capital but may also bring other benefits, starting with the creation of “redundancy” in the system.
“To save water from the Umbeluze station [in Maputo province], because we already have this one that will receive water from Intaca to supply the Laulane distribution centre,” the minister added.
In Mozambique, water access coverage is approximately 63%, according to government data, and the country aims to increase it through the construction of additional dams, particularly in the northern part of the country.
“We recognise that water coverage across the country requires significant progress, and that is why we have in our plan (...) the construction of dams in the north.
For example, we plan to build more dams. We have the Muera dam [Cabo Delgado], Macuje [Nampula], and Locoma [Niassa], because that is where we will be able to say we have safe water, by increasing coverage capacity,” he said.
In August, the then-President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, stated that 63.6% of the Mozambican population, corresponding to approximately 20 million people, already had access to drinking water at that time.
“At the beginning of my term in 2015, access to drinking water stood at 51%, supplying 12.6 million people, and at that time, Mozambicans numbered 20 million.” (...) With the implementation of several programmes, notably Água para Vida (Water for Life), coverage has risen to 63.6%, benefiting around 20 million people in 2024,” said Nyusi during the inauguration of the water supply system in Pemba, in the province of Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique.
RYR/ADB // ADB.
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