Africa Water Week (AWW), the African continents premier biennial event on the water calendar was held in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania from 18-22 July, 2016. The sixth AWW was held under the theme “Achieving the SDGs on Water Security and Sanitation”. The theme was built on the success and deliberations of the 2014 5th Africa Water Week on “Placing Water at the Heart of the post 2015 Development Agenda”.
The Hebei province is experiencing severe water shortages resulting in serious environmental and socio-ecological problems. To combat these issues, the provincial government has encouraged rainwater utilisation for agriculture as well as improving soil and water conservancy and vegetation cover. The most important lesson is that rainwater is able to alleviate water shortage particularly in dry season or dry zones.
The Chair of GWP WAf, Pr. Abel AFOUDA had a working visit at the Secretariat from October 19 to 24, 2015. During his stay on Ouagadougou, the Chair met with the staff to have an update on the implementation of various activities and give his orientations for finalizing pending issues.
He was presented the templates for the monitoring and drafting of the work plans, the draft progress reports of the CORE and the three projects bein implemented (WACDEP, IDMP and Mekrou), the guidelines for elaborating the budgets lines for 2016. On all these Prof. AFOUDA gave some orientations. The decision was also taken to convene the virtual meeting of the Steering Committee to appreciate the various documents and give orientations to the Secretariat. This meeting will be done early in November 2015.