[ACCI-CAVIE] The town of San Pedro, located in the southwest of Ivory Coast, will be equipped with new transit stations to improve solid waste management. The project studies were recently validated by the local authorities.

The future solid waste transit stations will be built on the Soubré road and on the San Pedro-Grand-Béréby axis, in the municipality of San Pedro in Ivory Coast. In Soubré, the facility will occupy a 10-hectare site with an expected daily capacity of 90 tonnes of waste. The stored waste will be transported to treatment centres.

The station planned on the San Pedro-Grand-Béréby axis will cover an area of 1.25 hectares. The facility will have a capacity similar to that of Soubré, i.e. 90 tonnes per day. The studies relating to the project, notably the diagnosis of the solid waste management sector in the commune, the strategic study of the sector and the communication plan were recently validated by the local authorities. They were carried out by the Studi International office based in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.

Delivery of the stations in 20 months

To ensure the efficiency of the transit stations, the San Pedro authorities plan to equip the two facilities with seven unloading docks and 18 caissons, each with a capacity of 30 m3, for the storage of solid waste. The aim is to guarantee a healthy living environment for the inhabitants of the Ivorian town by the end of the work, which is scheduled for 20 months. The local authorities estimate that the sanitation project will cost 2 billion CFA francs, more than 3 million euros.

The construction of the solid waste transit stations in San Pedro is part of the Infrastructure Project for Urban Development and the Competitiveness of Secondary Urban Areas (PIDUCAS), launched in 2017 and financed by the State of Ivory Coast to the tune of 78 billion CFA francs (nearly 119 million euros), with a loan from the World Bank. The project, which will run for 4 years in the cities of Bouaké and San Pedro, aims to improve access to basic infrastructure in urban and rural areas, including water, sanitation, electricity, etc.

By Inès Magoum and LB