Aboubacar@SOMAGEP

A small introduction...

My name is Aboubacar Diallo, a young chemical engineer with experience in Water, Pharmaceutical Industries and Oil & Gas. My first connection with the Netherlands was about R&D in Water, during an internship at TU Delft in 2011. It was wet, windy….but fun. My second relevant internship was one year later at SANOFI CHIMIE (Medicine production site, Pharmaceutical industry). I wanted to experience another field. I graduated in 2012 from French engineering school (INSA Toulouse) then I moved in to Paris to work for SUGAR CONSULTING in Oil & Gas. 

Working in Mali via the Young Expert Programme

I am back in water sector since June 2015, I am working at SOMAGEP: Société Malienne de Gestion de l’Eau Potable, the Malian public company responsible for drinking water management. Within all the areas in his scope of intervention (77 sites), SOMAGEP is taking into charge the production, distribution as well as billing of drinking water.

My Dutch connection has been renewed with the YEP Programme (YEP Batch 13). In November, I had three amazing training weeks in the Netherlands: networking, project management, negotiation, business model, entrepreneurship, social media, and much more.

Despite everyday morning traffic jam crossing the river Niger, I am motivated all day long at work. Also, the tasks are various and interesting. We focus on Water Quality Awareness regarding heavy metals and pesticides. We put into practice all the sample preparation recommended by the international standards for a more reliable analysis.

GeoWaQu project: Water Quality mapping via AKVO Flow

GeoWaQu @ SOMAGEP is drinking water quality mapping project. The main idea is about geolocating water quality from raw water (source) to produced water and finally distributed water (at the tap of the final consumer).

First round of data collection have been completed and we are gearing up for the second and last one. In between, we had the visit of Waternet Expert (Jos Hooft) who reflect on the results as well as non-conformity treatment procedure. Also, I had the opportunity to carry out a mission in Ségou-Markala-Koutiala where the results were interesting with new sampling points and new distribution network.

Aboubacar performing drinking water quality mapping

ISO 17025 accreditation for the SOMAGEP-SA lab

WaterWorX is long term partnership between Dutch and Local water utilities. The partnership is formalized as a Water Operators Partnership (WOP) and is targeting to improve, throughout knowledge exchange, local side in many fields: Non Revenue Water (Water lost, leakeages, etc.), Gender, Management, Pro-poor and of course Water Quality. There are 24 WaterWorX projects worldwide, of which one is the WOP between SOMAGEP and World Waternet.

WaterWorX is also going on beautifully with all eight teams set up. The Water Quality team which I am part of is managing the accreditation against ISO 17025 project. The SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) are under process: pH, Turbidity, Free Chlorine, E. Coli, Coliforms, etc. Apart from that, the technical manager and quality manager followed two weeks advanced training in the Netherlands regarding the implementation of Lab Quality Management System. Check this out on twitter: https://t.co/6cyMlmLja0n ()

Laboratory Quality Management System training (good practices laboratory) of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is a side event perfectly timed with our accreditation plan. My application have been accepted for three intense weeks fully dedicated to ISO 17025. India is an incredible country!

Aboubacar at the Taj Mahal (India)

AquaRating training

Aquarating is an IWA developed tool aiming to transform the management of water and sanitation utilities. FMO (the Dutch Development Bank) in the framework of his partnership with SOMAGEP, was made possible thanks to the WaterWorX programme, financed a training for three people in order to rate SOMAGEP by way of this international tool.

Despite the hot season the Ramadan, the holy month of sharing, has been surprisingly easy. Indeed, many rains lifted the weight of this diet worship: Fasting from sunrise to sunset. So during the Ramadan month AKVO shared with us Lumen throughout a two days (May 22^nd-23^rd) training. AKVO Lumen is about telling a story with your data on a map, that is to say the geolocation or with outstanding tools like tables, histograms, charts, etc. AKVO Lumen has been a good addition to our geolocating project (GeoWaQu @ SOMAGEP) with colorful map showing range of drinking water quality parameters at the sampling point.

YEP Intervision Weekend in Ghana

The West African experts of the Young Experts Programme (YEP) met in Accra for an intervision weekend, from July 6^th to 8^th. After the kick start of Dutch ambassador, the event was rich of topics like cultural differences but also field visits. Finally it was a nice opportunity for all Waternet YEP experts to meet and exchange knowledge and experience within different projects.

Aboubacar (left) with Ewoud, Isabel and Etienne, experts of the Young Expert Programme (YEP) who work in Mali and Burkina Faso for SOMAGEP, AEG and World Waternet.