Following the WACDEP Africa Technical Coordination and Annual Programming Meeting which was held from the 15th to the 17th of September 2014 at Meikles Hotel, Harare, Zimbabwe a training workshop on Project Preparation and Financing was held from the 18th to the 19th September, 2014. The training workshop brought together 35 participants which included the WACDEP Africa Coordination Unit; WACDEP Project Preparation National Consultants, WACDEP Work Package 4 (WP 4) National and Regional Partner Institutions and WACDEP Country Programme Managers.
Two missions of the secretariat were undertaken in Niger and Burkina to follow up on the recommendations of the audit report for 2014 and to see how ta carry out projects both wth the Dori and Tera municipalitie in Burkina and Niger.
The finance and Mekrou project managers went in Niamey on 12 and 16 April 2015 to work with the Niger CWP and host institution Eau Vive on the recommendations contained in the 2014 audit report on the implementation of the Mekrou project in Niger.
The four-day 2015, from March 25 to 29, BOAO Forum for Asia (BFA) was held in the scenic town in Hainan Province with the theme of "Asia's New Future: Toward a Community of Common Destiny". This is the first top-level multilateral forum in China after the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held earlier in March.
During the month of September, Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) through the support of its partner, the National Water and Sewerage Authority (NAWASA) of Grenada presented the winner of the 2013 GWP-C Media Awards on Water, Mr. Milton Coy with his winning prize.
The Office of the Prime Minster of Kosovo in cooperation with Global Water Partnership organized a National Drought Dialogue on 12 November 2014 in Pristina.
The Project Management Unit of WACDEP organised the 6th Technical Working Group (TWG) meeting on 12th February, 2015. The meeting was held at the conference room of the Water Resources Commission under the chairmanship of Nii Boi Ayibotele.
GWP SA was contracted by the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) to collaborate and lead in a project dealing with the development of knowledge products. The assignment involved packaging and targeting outputs of small scale infrastructure research undertaken in the Limpopo River basin between 2009 -2013.
The national reserve Sur is deteriorating. Action has been taken by NGOs to initiate a project to restore water conditions in the reserve, including the interplay between water and soil. Despite the projects importance, it failed to be implemented due to conflicts with national authorities. This case illustrates the danger of EU initiatives being implemented without an active public involvement since this creates risks of low acceptance of local communities and land owners.
Water is a source of conflict around the Berki River Basin in Ethiopia, predominantly a consequence of a lack of IWRM awareness and an institutional framework. Action was taken to implement an IWRM pilot project to account for different stakeholder interests, resulting in the development and adoption of the Berki Basin IWRM. Key lessons drawn from the project include the importance of capacity building, consensus building, and the importance of decentralised multi-stakeholder platforms for conflict management.