Signing of the agreement between BRGM and Les Eaux de Mayotte (LEMA), on Friday 6 March 2026.
© BRGM
On 6 March 2026, BRGM and Les Eaux de Mayotte (LEMA), Mayotte's water authority, signed a research and development agreement.
This initiative comes in response to severe pressure on water resources on the island of Mayotte. Following the water crisis of 2023, the public authorities significantly accelerated projects to diversify water sources. The aim is to limit the number of water quotas, which have had a severe impact on the daily lives of the people of Mayotte since 2022.
Several drilling campaigns since 2023
Since 2023, BRGM has carried out several exploratory drilling campaigns on behalf of Les Eaux de Mayotte to find new groundwater resources:
- a dozen boreholes were drilled in 2023-2024, seven of which have proven to be productive,
- around twenty hydrogeological sites were explored in 2024-2025.
At the beginning of 2025, LEMA, supported by the French government through the Mayotte Water Plan 2024-2027, asked BRGM to help it implement the 7th drilling campaign to create 24 new wells.
An R&D programme to strengthen water supplies
In response to this unprecedented demand in Mayotte, BRGM teams were mobilised in the summer of 2025 to build an innovative project.
With a budget of €1.9 million, the programme goes beyond the drilling of boreholes. In addition to the practical results expected by our local partners, it includes an R&D dimension enabling us to collect and exploit a wide range of scientific data on groundwater resources.
The data acquired will feed into BRGM's development of a water strategy for Mayotte.
