The Budget and Finance Committee is an ad hoc committee set up by the Steering Committee to review documents including work plans, budgets and progress and financial reports to give its opinion on the level of implementation GWP West Africa budgets.
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.
Following a period of unusual heavy monsoon precipitation that started in mid-July and continue into August 2015, Myanmar experienced the most severe flooding in decades. The rainfall is associated with the south-west Monsoon, which occurs each year, but the situation got worse after the land fall of Cyclone Komen in Bangladesh on 30th July 2015 which brought strong winds and additional heavy rain to (north) Myanmar.
The IDMP Waf team is preparing the capacity building workshop to be held in Ouagadougou from 4 to 8 Avril 2016 in Burkina Faso. This planned training of trainers (ToT) has been possible with the collaboration of CAPNET and aims at contrinuting to reduce the negative impacts of drought through some approaches like IWRM and effective planning. It will increase participants knowledge on these topics and come out with a monitoring tool. About twenty participants will take part drawn from administration, NGOs, Civil Society and private sector institutions of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the three pilot targeted countries of IDMP and some regional institutions in West Africa.
For more on IDMP WAF: felicite.vodounhessi@gwpao.org
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