Corridor Cities Draft the Rules for Water They Do Not Yet Fully Own

NIAMEY — The engineering argument over the Sahel water corridor is largely settled; the political one is just opening. With the spine running through its first full season, the mayors of eight corridor cities convened here this week to draft the ordinances that will govern metering, tariffs and priority-of-access — the unglamorous machinery that decides whether delivered water becomes drunk water. The Global Concordat Council, whose emergency water session under Secretary-General Ingrid Halvorsen set the July framework, has no writ over municipal billing, and the gap is where the fights live. Fatima Ould, a Niamey ward councilwoman, put the stakes plainly: "A pipe that reaches my district and a price my district can pay are two different promises. We have the first now. The second is this month's argument." Delegates left with a draft schedule but no adopted tariff, and pointedly no agreement on whether informal settlements — the corridor's newest arrivals — sit inside the paying grid or outside it. The water flows. Who is billed for it, and who is simply not counted, remains open.