Four Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States have commended the SADC Secretariat for taking the lead in the fight against communicable diseases, including COVID-19 and cholera, through the installation of handwashing facilities at border crossings.
The Global Water Leadership in a Changing Climate programme (GWL) has held multi-stakeholder consultations in seven countries identifying the most critical barriers to climate-resilient water management. Working groups have now been formed to investigate these barriers and develop responses, beginning with a ‘root cause analysis’. Updates from three countries follow.
The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) and Global Water Partnership Africa have renewed their partnership to transform water investments in Africa.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat has installed portable handwashing facilities at the Beitbridge border post on the Zimbabwean side of its border with South Africa, at Chirundu Border Post between Zimbabwe and Zambia, at Nakonde/Tunduma one stop border post between Zambia and the United Republic of Tanzania, and at Songwe/Kasumulu border crossing between Malawi and Tanzania.
Global Water Partnership and the Government of Tanzania are working on strategies that will improve the country’s management of water resources, with the aim of increasing water security and improving the economy.
For the past 10 months, Malawi has been battling a cholera outbreak which health authorities have classified as the worst in decades. The outbreak has so far claimed over a thousand lives and recorded over 25,000 cases as of January 2023, with the case fatality rate standing at 3.3% as opposed to the less than 1% recommended by the World Health Organization.
/ Caribbean, Central America, Global, South America, Southern Africa
Can the UN 2023 Water Conference help us to re-think how we value water and accelerate progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals?
The Government of Eswatini says the private sector needs to get involved in climate action to protect their own as well as the nation’s investments from the impacts of climate change. Government data shows that 80 percent of surveyed private sector enterprises reported that their businesses had been impacted by climate-related events, most of which had involved extreme and erratic rainfall and drought.
Southern Africa is endowed with a complex network of river systems, which are formed extensively from shared watercourses. 15 of the river basins within the region are shared between one or more countries, 13 of which are shared fully within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Cooperation is needed to promote sustainable management, development, and use of these shared water resources. This was one of the recommendations given during the special session on river basin organisations convened by SADC, OKACOM, and GWPSA on 20 October 2022 at the 23rd WaterNet/ WARFSA/ GWPSA Symposium.
