The Mékrou Project Officer was invited to take place to the meeting of Niger Basin Authority experts Committee prior to the Council of Minister in Abuja. The NBA meetings took place from May 25 to June 2, 2016 in the Capital city of Nigeria. GWP WA was fully represented by the Mékrou Project Officer.
A new budget proposal submitted for EU approval includes a budget line of 50,000 to support the implementation of demonstration projects in countries. The projects proposed by each country were initially budgeted to be implemented with much more funds, so it was asked from each country to resize the projects to fit the proposed budget or raise funds at national level to complement.
The Project Officer took part on May 6 and 11 respectively in Burkina and Niger to follow up meetings to discuss the standard template for the drafting of the consultants reports on the identification of national development priorities in the Mékrou basin.
A GWP delegation including the Coordinator, the Project manager and by the chair met with the Niger Basin Authority (NBA) Executive Secretary and some her colleagues on May 10, 2016. The discussions focused on how to start the implementation of the framework agreement for the promotion of political dialogue in the Mékrou tranboundary river basin signed in December 2015 by the three countries. To start with it was sugggested that the issue be included in the agenda of the next NBA council of ministers.
In Burkina Faso, the work is in progress on the second site in the village of Komki after the first one was abandoned because of some land dispute in the village of Baragho. These works include establishing the topographical boundaries of the site, training of beneficiaries by the CWP Project officer for the materialization of the fence, installation of the fence and mobilization of beneficiaries for digging holes.
The below links are suggested reading materials for participants in the International Water Law training in Kampala, Uganda, 5-12 June 2016.
A training of trainers capacity building workshop was held from 25 to 29 April 2016 on "drought risk reduction in the context of Integrated Water Resources Management" with the financial and technical support of Cap-Net. The course content focused on six (6) modules on Overview of drought / occurrence of droughts, vulnerability and IWRM (Module 1), Vulnerability and impacts of droughts (Module 2), Managing the risks of drought (Module 3), Characterization of droughts, temporal and special scale, monitoring and forecasting ((Module 4), Strategic Planning in IWRM for risk management of drought (Module 5), Preparing for drought, emergency management and post drought recovery (6. Module 6).
The Integrated Drought Management in West Africa (IDMP WA) Project Officer visited Torodi, Niger from 13 to 16 April 2016. She was accompanied by the Permanent Secretary of the Niger CWP and the person in charge of communication to visit the demonstration pilot site in Kankantouti, a village of the rural municipality of Torodi.
The CWP Guinea was visited by a team of consultant working on the evolutions in the Senegal basin transboundary environemental diagnosis analysis developed in 2006 and the need for revising it. The discussions included also how the CWP could play a more active role in the second phase of the IWRM programme (PGIRE) of OMVS, the present state of the Senegal basin, present trends of hydrological data in the basin, the environmental degradation and the Gender mainstreaming.
The first draft of the national studies in Benin, Burkina and Niger on the identification of development priorities in the Mekrou Basin have been submitted to the Project Manager. These drafts were forwarded to the Project Management team as well as to the international consultant recruited by GWPO to make a coherence in the national studies. The international consultant is to ensure the national consultants’ work comply with the Terms of Reference and create a coherence between the three studies.