Frequently asked questions

The Syndicat interdépartemental pour l’assainissement de l’agglomération parisienne is the public body that treats the Paris region’s wastewater. Its six plants treat 2.5 billion litres a day on average, for 9.25 million users. It is one of Europe’s leading sanitation operators.

There, I helped write a self-monitoring manual.

Source: Wikipedia (in French)

In France, the operator of a sanitation system above a certain size must monitor its own works and the water body that receives its discharges. The self-monitoring manual sets out the method: measuring points, analyses, equipment, reporting of results. It goes to the water agency and to the inspection service, which approves it.

Source: Order of 21 July 2015, article 20 (in French)

The flagship programme of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), which the US Government runs for young African leaders. A State Department programme, it brings leaders aged 25 to 35 from every country in Sub-Saharan Africa to six-week Leadership Institutes at American universities. Nearly 7,800 have taken part since 2014.

I was a Fellow in 2017.

Source: mandelawashingtonfellowship.org

Waterleaf delivers infrastructure for public and private clients, from studies to maintenance, in three trades.

In drinking water and sanitation, the company lays drinking water and wastewater networks, builds reinforced concrete reservoirs and pumping stations, and drains rainwater.

Effluents are the wastewater that factories and homes release. Waterleaf treats and recovers them, to reduce their environmental impact and meet standards.

In public works, the company builds paved roads, laterite rural tracks, bridges and culverts (the small structures that carry water under a road), as well as buildings.

A wastewater treatment plant that fits in a shipping container and works as soon as it is connected. Waterleaf installs them for industry and for construction camps, where site crews live.

The company then maintains them and runs their physico-chemical self-monitoring, that is, regular checks on the quality of the water they discharge.

A prefabricated classroom, designed as Senegal’s answer to temporary shelters, the makeshift classrooms of some schools. After several months of research and development at Waterleaf, it is produced and assembled in Senegal in fifteen days.

The focus is on learning conditions: stronger safety, environmentally friendly materials with high thermal inertia (they buffer the heat), better acoustics, natural light. Series production brings the cost down.

SOKKEL, a Waterleaf subsidiary, is developing it with the architecture firm Lamtoro Architecture.

Waterleaf’s modular construction subsidiary. SOKKEL is developing Classou Dibor with the architecture firm Lamtoro Architecture.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) harmonises its member states’ standards to reduce technical barriers to trade between them. Technical harmonisation committees do this work, each in its own field, such as agricultural products or building materials.

THC07 covers water and sanitation. I take part in its work.

Source: Senegalese Standards Association

Senegal’s national standards body, recognised as being of public utility. In 2002 the ASN replaced the Senegalese Standards Institute, created in 1978; it represents the country in regional and international standards bodies, including ISO.

I take part in the work of its technical committee that revises, among other things, ISO standards on water and sanitation.

Source: asn.sn (in French)

The Africa Water and Sanitation Systems Leadership Symposium, held in August 2026 at the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda. It brought together the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), the African Development Bank, the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) and the World Bank, among others. Its work ended on 20 August with the adoption of the Kigali Communiqué.

I took part in it.

What I took from it →

Source: Les Africaines, 27 August 2026 (in French)

Rules that favour the participation of national companies in activities linked to the exploitation of natural resources. Several African countries have adopted them, notably in mining. I propose applying the same principle to water and sanitation.

In Senegal, Waterleaf was a silver sponsor of the 2025 Local Content Days, organised by the technical secretariat of the National Local Content Monitoring Committee (CNSCL).

My proposal →

Sources: Les Africaines, 27 August 2026 (in French) · CNSCL, 2025 (in French)