The ministries responsible for water management organized on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 in Bujumbura, a press café for journalists and key actors in the field of water. Objective: to talk about the importance of water and the link between water and climate change.
This press café is organized at a time when Burundi joins the whole world on 26 March 2020 to celebrate World Water Day, which is celebrated on 22 March of each year. This year, this day is celebrated under the theme: “Water and Climate Change”.

During this press coffee, experts from the Ministry in charge of the environment, through their presentations, showed that water is a vital source for humans, for biodiversity and sustainable development in general.
According to Jérémie Nkinahatemba, Director General of Environment and Sanitation, Burundi has a lot of water sources including lakes, rivers, wetlands and many others.
He said that water sources are sufficient in Burundi. “Our country has 24787 water sources, including 17821 in good condition, 1418 in the process of disappearance while 2508 have dried up,” continued Jérémie Nkinahatemba.

He explained that following this problem of drying up water sources, the Government of Burundi, through the ministry responsible for the environment, has put in place certain actions aimed at restoring these water sources.
According to the Director General of Water and Sanitation at the Ministry of Hydraulics, Energy and Mines, 71% of the population in the interior of the country have access to drinking water and in the city of Bujumbura, almost 90% can access drinking water.

All speakers called on the Burundian population to adopt the protection of water sources and to avoid behaviors that lead to their drying out.
The Director General of Environment and Sanitation took the opportunity to invite the entire Burundian population to participate massively in the establishment of anti-erosion ditches by planting trees and soil-fixing herbs, maintaining and cleaning gutters in cities, in order to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Several activities were carried out during the week dedicated to water, in particular the planting of trees on the Kirinzi hill in the commune of Mugamba in the province of Bururi and the planting of bamboos along the Rusizi River on the Rukana II hill in the Rukana II hill of Rugombo commune in Cibitoke province.