Water Resources Management and Hydraulic Infrastructures in the Senegal River Basin: The Case Study of Senegal, Mali and Mauritania

The water resources of the Sahelian countries bordering the Senegal River basin (Senegal, Mali and Mauritania) are limited and unevenly distributed. To overcome the unequal distribution of water resources and to manage floods and droughts in the Senegal River Basin, hydraulic infrastructures have been built in the Senegal River Basin, starting with the Manantali dam. The paper reviews the current water storage capacity in the Senegalese, Malian and Mauritanian parts of the Senegal River Basin from a sustainable water resources management perspective. Data from the Manantali dam and from the water resources of the downstream countries (Mali, Senegal and Mauritania) in the Senegal River basin were employed to assess water storage capacity at country level in this basin. Water storage capacity was found to be lowest in the Mauritanian part and highest in the Malian part. These results led to the conclusion that despite the OMVS based heavy investment in the infrastructure of water storage capacity there is both need and potential for infrastructure increase. As the Senegal River Basin is a transboundary case the riparian countries sharing in order to promote integrated water resources management at the basin level, need to continue to develop additional storage to underpin and modernize the responsible use of water resources through the construction of other multifunctional water infrastructure.