Burkina CWP has initiated a series of meetings with some foreign embassies in Ouagadougou. Thus, a delegation met with the Ambassador of Morocco in Ouagadougou, Mr. FARHAT BUAZZA on April 20, 2015 for a courtesy visit to present the CWP and its portfolio of projects for a possible collaboration. The Ambassador welcomed the visit and thanked the Chair and his team.
The delegation met on April 23, the Ambassador of South Africa, HE Mr. Gangumzi TSENGIWE, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Belgium in Burkina Faso, Mr Philip HEUTS.
GWP Southeast Asia has produced a video as part of their Water, Climate and Development Programme (WACDEP). It introduces the district of Maesot in west Thailand, where communities are helping each other to deal with flood related problems.
Name: Maria Amakali
Occupation: Director of Water Resources Management
Country: Namibia
Country of Work: Namibia and SADC
What would you say are the main challenges in your work as a woman?
I started working as hydrologist in the Department of Water Affairs in the early nineties. I had studied in the US and was ready to come and work in a newly independent Namibia. My responsibilities included planning and execution of research and investigations regarding sustainable development of water resources; and providing advice on the effective utilization, protection and conservation of such resources. At a time I found a lot of males, in the department. Except for the two women scientist in Hydrology Division, most women were doing mostly secretarial or office administrative work. I remember one day standing outside, waiting for my ride home and this man came to me asking whose secretary I was. In an independent Namibia, I was quite shocked that the old stereotype mentality that women can only be secretaries still exists. Those days there were not many women or black hydrologists, but I was still offended.
The Volta Basin Authority (VBA) held from August 3 to 5, 2015, in Abidjan, Republic of Côte d'Ivoire the Regional Stakeholder Forum on Governance in the Volta Basin under the theme "Water, source of conflict or cooperation".
Organized by the VBA in collaboration with IUCN, the meeting gathered the focal points of the VBA, civil society, the six riparian countries (Benin, Burkina, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, and Togo) and resource persons from IUCN, WRCC / ECOWAS, CILSS and GWP / WA.
International donors have poured money into developing Nepal’s irrigation infrastructures since the late-1950s, but results remain only partly successful. At present, irrigation infrastructures have been developed to serve 1.331 million ha but the irrigation potential is estimated to about 1.76 million ha. The Irrigation Water Resources Management Project is one of the latest international aid efforts aimed to developing the irrigation facilities while improving Nepal’s institutional framework pertaining to water infrastructure projects. The importance of adequate and timely finance, well-defined administrative roles and institutional capacity building are part of the key lessons learned from this project.
Global Water Partnership (GWP) celebrates its 20th anniversary at a time when the global development agenda is at a turning point. Following the recently adopted 2030 Agenda in 2015, a new animation video has been released to show GWP’s response to the world’s water challenges: partnership and cross-sector collaboration are key.
The Global Water Partnership Southern Africa (GWPSA) together with the Agriculture Research Council (ARC) held a close-out workshop at Khoroni Metcourt in Venda, South Africa on 26 March 2015. A total of 24 people attended the workshop, the majority of whom were direct beneficiaries of the project, the farmers that implemented the Rain water Harvesting on their fields. Other key representatives were from the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) and the Limpopo Department of Agriculture, the tribal authority from Ha-Lambani .
GWP-Med, along with partner organisation Lions' Club, is coordinating a national campaign in Tunisian primary schools for awareness raising with regards to water scarcity and the importance of water saving, during the month of February. The campaign is called ÔVI (eau=vie / water=life) and is taking place within the framework of the activity "La Jeunesse Francophone pour l'eau" [Francophone Youth for Water], jointly held by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the Office Franco-Québécois pour la Jeunesse (OFQJ), as well as the BeWater Project and the work it does on raising the Tunisian youth's voice on water resources management.
GWP-Med organised a workshop on Mainstreaming Gender and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in water policy related work on 2-4 March 2015, in Athens, in the framework of the ‘Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector’ Project, aiming to strengthen the Secretariat’s, as well as its partners’ relevant capacity.