Shared Water Resources

The overall objective of this component is to support the joint development of shared waters in the areas of advocacy, partnerships and strategy development. This will be achieved through facilitating political will, development of legislative frameworks, promotion of cooperation, mobilisation of resources, and planning joint development programmes able to attract investments.

It is expected that this will lead to an overall outcome of improved TWRM, with regional organisations having increased capacity to mange transboundary water resources under a cooperative framework.

The cooperative environment for sustainable TWRM and funding for investments intended to yield shared benefits for the riparian countries will be improved.

These outcomes will be measured using the indicators of progress towards management of shared river basin under cooperative framework arrangement, and implementation of joint programmes, or at least the 10 shared river basins that have been prioritized by AMCOW and NEPAD.

The priority river basins in this regard comprise:

• West Africa: Senegal, Niger, Volta;
• Central Africa: Lake Chad, Congo;
• East Africa: Nile (which includes Victoria and Kagera)
• Southern Africa: Zambezi, Okavango, Orange/Senqu;
• North Africa: Shared aquifers in North Africa (including the Nubian Sandstone)
• Aquifer and the Northern Sahara Aquifer System).

AWF interventions in TWRM will be strategically targeted at activities that will add value and achieve quick measurable results with small funds, and when there is real need to complement the existing donors in the field.

The main outputs are the development of framework agreements on water sharing, joint planning processes and partnership arrangements.These will be measured using the following indicators:

• Number of river basins for which shared visions and cooperative frameworks are developed. At least 10 shared river basins that have been prioritized by NEPAD will be covered by 2009;
• Regional programme elaborated and agreed upon for all the RBOs of the 10 river basins by 2009;
• Number of RBOs strengthened for effective implementation, with at least five
• RBOs having adequate capacity for TWRM by 2009.