Balaoum (Kalâa Kebira) Dam
Dam (storage and irrigation), 28 million m3 in Tunisia.
The record
- Country
- Tunisia
- Location
- Kalâa Kebira, Sousse governorate
- Coordinates
- 35.830, 10.390
- Technology
- Dam (storage and irrigation)
- Capacity
- 28 million m3
- Capital cost
- —
- Stage
- Under construction
- Owner or client
- Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries, Directorate General of Dams and Major Hydraulic Works
- Contractor
- —
- Operator
- —
- Finance
- —
- Award or start year
- —
- Commissioned
- —
Record last checked 2026-09-20.
History
No dated milestones recorded yet. They are added as each is confirmed against a public announcement.
Sources
10 references
Every field in the record above is taken from the references below. A field that none of them confirms prints as a dash.
- Webmanagercenter with Tunis Afrique Presse, Barrage Balaoum a Kalaa Kebira: 90 pour cent de taux d'avancement, 28 February 2023. webmanagercenter.com.
- Construction of the Balaoum dam at Kalaa Kebira in Sousse governorate had reached 90 per cent.
- Retention capacity is 28 million cubic metres.
- The structure covers 290 hectares and will be linked to the Saida dam in Manouba governorate by water conveyance works costing 167 million dinars.
- The two dams are meant to cover the drinking water deficit projected for 2050 in Greater Tunis, the Sahel, Cap Bon and Sfax by storing part of the country's northern water, transferring it to treatment plants, and using it for irrigation and strategic storage.
- Tunis Afrique Presse, Sousse: le chantier du barrage Balaoum a Kalaa Kebira a atteint 90 pour cent de taux d'avancement, 27 February 2023. tap.info.tn.
- The same announcement from the first session of the regional water council; only the opening lines are readable without a subscription.
- African Manager, 17 October 2025. africanmanager.com.
- The Minister of Agriculture lists the Saida and Kalaa Kebira reservoirs among the surface water mobilisation works continuing in 2026. African Manager, 24 August 2026. africanmanager.com.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Saida and Kalaa Kebira are built in parallel for a combined 600 million dinars. Budget is left blank because the 167 million dinar figure covers the conveyance works to Saida rather than the dam, and the 600 million dinar figure covers both dams. An earlier capacity of 33 million cubic metres appears in 2018 reporting that was not opened here and is not used. Coordinates added on 20 September 2026, approximate. OpenStreetMap way 1329775445, an unnamed dam embankment first mapped in November 2024, rings a basin about 1.0 km by 1.6 km across, centred on 35.8322 10.3904. Reverse geocoding returns بلعوم in the Kalâa Kebira delegation of Sousse governorate, the locality the dam is named after. The feature carries no name, so the pin is given to two decimals.