In August 2017, Water. Desalination + reuse (Faversham House) reported that a consortium of France's Eiffage Génie Civil and Spain's Tedagua had secured a contract for a desalination plant in Djibouti. The deal was worth €63 million, with €37 million going to Eiffage. The EU-funded PEPER project covered a 22,500 m³/day plant expandable to 45,000 m³/day, a 5,000 m³ tank and an 8.5 kilometre pipeline of 700 mm diameter. Three years of construction were to be followed by five years of operation and maintenance.
The report showed that the EU was then financing desalination in the Horn of Africa as a development project, bundling construction, pipeline and several years of operation into one contract.