Regional Programs
Horn of Africa
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is beset by increasing intensity and frequency of drought, causing local communities to regularly migrate within and across borders to secure water sources. CIWA is at the forefront of work to improve the Horn’s use of groundwater and is providing leadership for regional groundwater knowledge and planning and critical climate resilience to shocks from climate change. It also supported Somalia with capacity-strengthening efforts through transboundary dialogue, trust-building, and information exchange.
The Horn of Africa is beset by increasing intensity and frequency of drought, causing local communities to regularly migrate within and across borders to secure water sources. CIWA is at the forefront of work to improve the Horn’s use of groundwater and is providing leadership for regional groundwater knowledge and planning and critical climate resilience to shocks from climate change. It also supported Somalia with capacity-strengthening efforts through transboundary dialogue, trust-building, and information exchange.
Untapping Resilience: Groundwater Management and Learning in the Horn of Africa’s Borderlands
The Challenge
Since 2025, the eastern Horn of Africa has faced a punishing cycle of drought and flood, and a new El Niño event—forecast with over 90% probability between mid-2026 and early 2027—threatens to bring both at once. These shocks hit hardest in the borderlands, arid and semi-arid rangelands where pastoralist communities depend on scarce water points and grazing land. As resources dwindle, competition intensifies, deepening conflict and displacement risks for already vulnerable populations, particularly women.
With surface water scarce, groundwater is a critical resource for resilience, peace, and economic development—but it remains underused due to gaps in data, infrastructure, and institutional capacity. CIWA’s Untapping Resilience initiative supports the World Bank’s Horn of Africa Groundwater for Resilience (GW4R) program by strengthening monitoring, learning, and institutions for regional cooperation on groundwater.
Five Years of Progress
Now in its fifth year, Untapping Resilience has scaled up data integration, learning, and capacity-building across the region. Its knowledge products and tools are shaping how partners approach procurement, contracts, environmental standards, and long-term operations and maintenance (O&M)—while regional learning events and trainings build lasting institutional capacity.
Beyond CIWA’s direct support, this work is taking root regionally: IGAD has built a dedicated groundwater team and is now recognized as a center of technical expertise, recently engaged by AUDA-NEPAD to support transboundary aquifer assessments under the World Bank’s $1.5 billion Africa East WASH program.
Building Knowledge Systems
CIWA has helped develop the GW4R monitoring platform, a management information system (MIS) that has grown from a simple reporting tool into a real-time decision-support system. In FY26, new features—including pastoralist migration route data and a grievance redress dashboard—made the platform more useful for tracking risk and infrastructure performance across the region.
Alongside this, CIWA supported the launch of IGAD’s Groundwater Information System (GWIS), a shared platform for regional data and planning. A World Bank–UNESCO partnership helped standardize data collection and sharing across countries.
Groundwater, Fragility, and Resilience
Field experience continues to show that groundwater investments build peace and resilience only when they account for conflict dynamics and pastoralist livelihoods from the start. Two tools now guide this work:
– A rangeland guideline helps teams map migration routes and water points, assess infrastructure impacts, and design mitigation measures—now shaping environmental assessments and community agreements in Somaliland, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
– A conflict-sensitivity assessment tool has been applied across five Kenyan counties (Turkana, Marsabit, Garissa, Wajir, and Mandera) to map local tensions and inform peacebuilding strategies.
A policy brief, developed with the Rift Valley Institute and the Centre for Humanitarian Change, translates these lessons into recommendations for more conflict-sensitive, equitable water governance.
Regional Cooperation on Shared Aquifers
Feasibility studies for major transboundary aquifers—including the Northern Basement, Dawa, and Shabelle systems—are building the shared evidence base needed for joint management. The Merti Aquifer memorandum of understanding is now close to signature, a major milestone toward formal cooperation between countries.
Strengthening Institutions
CIWA’s sixth regional learning workshop brought together stakeholders from across the Horn—including Djibouti, joining for the first time—to exchange lessons on O&M models, contract management, and climate resilience planning. These discussions are directly shaping the design of Phase II of the GW4R program, emphasizing integrated planning from the outset to reduce delays and sustainability risks down the line.
CIWA’s work also reached global audiences this year, featured at Stockholm World Water Week, a Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development webinar, and a groundwater learning event in Rwanda—sharing the Horn of Africa’s experience with practitioners worldwide. In November 2025, the CIWA Advisory Committee meeting in Nairobi highlighted the program’s impact to date: climate-resilient water services expanded to nearly 1.94 million people, and 319 water supply schemes built or rehabilitated in drought-prone areas.
The knowledge generated through this program is now informing other operations, including Ethiopia’s CRISP program, the Africa RISE regional program, and Kenya’s National Irrigation Sector Investment Program.
Looking Ahead
The coming year will focus on hands-on, country-specific support—addressing procurement in Ethiopia, fiduciary issues in Kenya, and contract management as projects move into implementation. Priorities include sustainable O&M models, further development of the GWIS, and publication of a consolidated CIWA learning agenda book capturing lessons from across the region.
Calming conflict through groundwater resilience
Posted in : Blog on 18 January 2025
Igbal Salah, a hydrologist at IGAD, is doing her part to minimize conflict in the borderlands of the HoA by working with CIWA on its Untapping Resilience: Groundwater Management and Learning in the Horn of Africa’s Borderlands initiative and the related World Bank GW4R program. Read the latest CIWA blog on Horn of Africa.
Digging deep: Groundwater in the Horn of Africa’s fragile borderlands
Posted in : Blog on 21 March 2024
In the conflict-prone borderlands of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan, The Horn of Africa Groundwater for Resilience Project is an ambitious operation to increase information on aquifers and the countries’ capacity to manage them and to develop water service delivery infrastructure to enhance drought resilience of vulnerable populations.
Invisible Bonds: Resilience Building in the Horn of Africa’s Borderlands
Posted in : Blog on 22 August 2022
Fostering stakeholder dialogue, embedding trust, and building relationships underpinned by equitable information and knowledge sharing, will be pivotal for the Horn of Africa to build back greener and develop resilient development pathways.
South Sudan Transboundary Waters Support Program
The Challenge
South Sudan faces overlapping crises: ongoing conflict—both internal and spilling over from Sudan—and the lasting effects of catastrophic 2024 flooding, which in 2025 alone displaced roughly 335,000 people across 26 counties. The country ranks as the world’s second most vulnerable to natural hazards and has the lowest coping capacity globally. Conflict has driven mass displacement too, with over 2 million internally displaced people and nearly 500,000 refugees, mostly from Sudan. A cholera outbreak declared in October 2024 continues to affect communities, and more than half the population faced crisis-level food insecurity in FY26.
Yet South Sudan holds vast water resources, including the Sudd—one of the world’s largest wetlands, vital to regional hydrology and climate regulation. Nearly 90% of the country’s surface water is shared with neighboring countries, making transboundary management essential, but institutional capacity, infrastructure, and data systems remain weak.
Program Progress
Now in its third year, the South Sudan Transboundary Waters Support Program—part of the Regional Climate Resilience Program for Eastern and Southern Africa (RCRP)—has advanced across four pillars to strengthen the government’s capacity for water cooperation and management.
Water planning and coordination: Working with UNHCR and the Commission for Refugee Affairs, the program mapped humanitarian and development actors across three refugee settlements, identifying coordination gaps. A climate risk assessment in these areas is informing priority interventions—from early-warning systems to infrastructure risk mitigation—and building government capacity to manage climate risk in refugee policy.
Regional information exchange: The program is building the capacity of South Sudan’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, alongside regional Nile Basin bodies (ENTRO and NELSAP-CU), to strengthen multi-hazard early-warning systems—including weekly Earth Observation maps that support flood tracking.
Knowledge and capacity-building: A major study on the Sudd wetland’s hydrological role is underway. Two components are complete: an ecosystem mapping and services assessment, and a freshwater biodiversity baseline—both producing spatial datasets and technical reports. Work continues on assessing pressures like climate change and land-use shifts, alongside training and dissemination activities.
Flood-risk and infrastructure planning: This newer pillar helps South Sudan plan flood management investments while exploring how excess floodwaters can support agriculture and fisheries. Work includes analyzing past flood events, transboundary flood modeling, and feasibility studies for two irrigation schemes.
Looking Ahead
The flood management pillar will scale up, extending the program through FY27. Remaining work on the Sudd ecosystem study—particularly the pressures assessment—will continue, with findings shared through stakeholder engagement to support evidence-based water management across the Nile Basin.
Longa Seme Isaiah: An evangelist for regional cooperation
Posted in : A View From The Field on 19 January 2026
How water data, early-warning systems, and regional cooperation are helping South Sudan reduce flood impacts amid climate change, fragility, and conflict. Read the story of Longa Seme Isaiah.
Three Keys to Successful Transboundary Water Cooperation in Africa
Posted in : Blog on 28 May 2025
With the impact of extreme weather events frequently crossing national boundaries, regional cooperation is essential to address them. By focusing on three keys, the Regional Climate Resilience Program is creating water management systems that can withstand climate variability while reducing cross-border tensions.
Nurturing future water experts for sustainable water resources management in Africa
Posted in : Blog on 16 July 2020
Youth are instrumental in addressing the world’s key issues and play a crucial role in sustainable development efforts. CIWA and the World Bank are building the skills of youth to meet new challenges.
Accelerating Access to WASH in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region
The Challenge
Eastern and Southern Africa face a deepening water and sanitation crisis. Despite decades of progress, hundreds of millions of people—especially in rural areas—still lack basic access, driven by weak governance, underinvestment, and worsening climate shocks like droughts and floods. Women and girls bear the heaviest burden, often losing hours each day to water collection instead of school or work.
CIWA supports Pillar 4 of the World Bank’s new $1.6 billion regional program, Accelerating Access to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Eastern and Southern Africa—implemented by AUDA-NEPAD across 12 countries: Angola, Burundi, Comoros, DRC, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia. The program marks a shift from fragmented, country-by-country efforts toward a coordinated, cross-border approach to climate-resilient WASH services. CIWA’s $5 million grant funds transboundary aquifer assessments that will fill critical knowledge gaps and inform future investment and cooperation.
Progress
FY26 was the program’s first implementation year, focused on setting up institutional arrangements. Two key contracts were awarded: the SADC Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI) will lead technical oversight for the southeastern region, and IGAD will do the same for the Horn of Africa. These institutions will manage the procurement and technical direction of the aquifer assessment studies still to come.
Looking Ahead
In FY27, the priority is to activate the SADC-GMI and IGAD contracts and begin technical scoping—defining the methodology for the aquifer assessments. Once that foundation is in place, procurement will begin for the assessments themselves, which will cover major shared aquifer systems across the region and form the core knowledge product of the grant. The team will also look for ways to build gender and social inclusion considerations into the assessment design.
West and Central Africa
West and Central Africa
West and Central Africa faces immense climate impacts, including prolonged drought and unpredictable, more severe/recurring flooding in the Sahel which also suffers from fragility, violence, weak institutions, and political instability. In a region with widespread gender inequality, women are more affected than men by these conditions. CIWA worked to improve water resource management by identifying investments and policy actions and addressing knowledge and capacity gaps. It also conducted the Water Security Assessment in Lake Chad as the first step toward developing a transformative water security framework for addressing the region’s challenges.
West and Central Africa faces immense climate impacts, including prolonged drought and unpredictable, more severe/recurring flooding in the Sahel which also suffers from fragility, violence, weak institutions, and political instability. In a region with widespread gender inequality, women are more affected than men by these conditions. CIWA worked to improve water resource management by identifying investments and policy actions and addressing knowledge and capacity gaps. It also conducted the Water Security Assessment in Lake Chad as the first step toward developing a transformative water security framework for addressing the region’s challenges.
Improving Water Resources Management in West and Central Sahel
The Challenge
The regional political landscape continues to evolve: Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger withdrew from ECOWAS in 2024 to form the Alliance of Sahel States, though all three remain members of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development—a positive sign for continued cooperation on water issues. At the same time, international aid financing is shrinking even as needs grow.
An emerging El Niño is raising the risk of drought, erratic rainfall, and localized flooding across the Sahel, compounding water stress in a region already highly exposed to climate and conflict pressures. Meanwhile, Senegal has stepped up as a regional water leader—through AMCOW, preparations for the 2026 UN Water Conference, and a new national Water Compact—reinforcing the Senegal River Basin Authority (OMVS) as a flagship platform for transboundary cooperation.
CIWA’s Improving Water Resources Management in West and Central Sahel initiative supports pragmatic investments and capacity-building across Sahelian basins, with particular attention to climate change and fragility. Now in its third phase (through February 2027), the initiative is helping shape a shared regional vision through the World Bank’s new West Africa Water Strategy and laying groundwork for DREVE, an ambitious upcoming transboundary water program for the Sahel.
Progress
Preparing DREVE: CIWA is deepening regional dialogue and shaping the vision for DREVE, which will cover the Senegal and Niger River basins and key transboundary aquifers. CIWA has supported technical working groups across ECOWAS, CILSS, and WAEMU, and is co-financing DREVE’s regional cooperation component. This year also saw the launch of a regional stocktaking study on SDG 6 progress, to be discussed at the West African Water Forum in Abidjan this September, and continued work on a master plan for the Fouta Djallon Highlands, a critical regional water source. CIWA is also helping OMVS design innovative financing mechanisms, drawing on models like the Cubango-Okavango River Basin Fund.
Sahel Irrigation Strategy: CIWA-funded analysis underpins the Sahel Irrigation Strategy, now a shared framework for regional investment planning. Support continued for national irrigation action plans in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mauritania, and for farmer-led irrigation using shallow groundwater to protect deeper transboundary aquifers.
Senegal-Mauritania Aquifer Basin (SMAB) cooperation: A major milestone was reached this year: after national consultations in all four member states (The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, and Senegal), a consolidated cooperation agreement was finalized, translated into four languages, and sent to governments for approval. Signature is expected in December 2026, alongside the UN Water Conference.
Complementary groundwater work: CIWA continues to support an Italian Cooperation-funded groundwater governance project for the SMAB, and coordinates with a related GEF-funded initiative to avoid duplication and ensure a coherent regional approach.
Flying rivers and nature-based solutions: CIWA-funded research into how vegetation and forests sustain water availability across the Senegal River Basin is nearing completion, with FAO collaboration expanding the analysis to inform future DREVE investments.
Looking Ahead
CIWA will support the SMAB agreement through government approval and signature, and help align monitoring systems across the region toward a unified water information portal. Work will continue on DREVE implementation, the Fouta Djallon master plan, the West African Water Forum, and a proposed West Africa Water Fund—alongside continued expansion of the Sahel Irrigation Strategy’s National Action Plan process to Chad, Niger, and Senegal.
Reflecting on 20 years of transboundary water engagement in Western Africa: impacts and lessons learned
Posted in : Blog on 1 March 2022
This blog examines the World Bank’s 20-year engagement in the Western Africa region to suggest new directions for water resources management and development.
Protecting groundwater from depletion in the SMAB
Posted in : A View From The Field on 5 May 2025
To manage and govern groundwater effectively, Landing Bojang, chief hydrologist of The Gambia’s Department of Water Resources, advocates for public sensitization, laws, regulations, and institutional capacity.
Training the next generation of groundwater specialists in the Sahel
Posted in : Blog on 22 November 2022
In the Sahel, a global hotspot for climate change and one of the poorest regions in the world, limited knowledge about groundwater resources hampers efforts to develop strategies to cope with water scarcity. Nor are there enough hydrogeologists trained in the sustainable management of this resource.
Niger River Basin Management Project to support institutional strengthening of the Niger Basin Authority and enhance benefit sharing around the planned Fomi Dam
Posted in : Blog on 10 August 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS Following endorsement of the project’s justification note by its development partners, CIWA is set to begin an exciting new partnership with the Niger Basin Authority (NBA) on the Niger River Basin Management Project. The $7.5 million project aims to enhance the NBA’s capacity for facilitating improved water resources management and development in the […]
East Africa
East Africa
East Africa faces intertwined challenges including climate change, food and water insecurity, and conflict. CIWA’s long history in the Nile Basin supports resilience by strengthening early warning systems, climate risk tools, and cooperation across governments, and by broadening stakeholder engagement in water management and climate action.
East Africa faces intertwined challenges including climate change, food and water insecurity, and conflict. CIWA’s long history in the Nile Basin supports resilience by strengthening early warning systems, climate risk tools, and cooperation across governments, and by broadening stakeholder engagement in water management and climate action.
Nile Civil Society for Climate Resilience (NCSCR)
The Challenge
The Nile Basin faces mounting pressure from population growth, land degradation, and climate-driven water variability—making community-led adaptation essential alongside large infrastructure projects. The Nile Basin Discourse (NBD), a network of over 640 grassroots organizations, gives riparian communities—especially women and youth—a voice in shaping transboundary water policy.
CIWA supports NBD’s two-year, $3 million Nile Civil Society for Climate Resilience (NCSCR) project, launched in early 2025. The project builds citizen-led environmental monitoring and nature-based solutions capacity in key sub-basins, turning grassroots data into evidence that can shape major water investments—ensuring they’re inclusive and climate-resilient. It works across three components: community engagement and monitoring, stakeholder platforms for women and youth, and project management toward NBD’s long-term financial independence.
Progress
Community monitoring and capacity: Working with the AKVO Foundation, the project built a citizen-led data platform for the Sio-Siteko (Kenya-Uganda) and Mara (Tanzania-Kenya) basins, set to begin active field data collection by mid-2026. Climate adaptation and nature-based solutions trainings reached 476 grassroots participants across seven countries, with strong representation—54% women, 32% youth. Community consultations in the Kagera Basin and new toolkits for National Discourse Forums (NDFs) are strengthening ties between local voices and national ministries.
Women, youth, and stakeholder platforms: The Regional Nile Women’s Network formally endorsed its operating guidelines, embedding women’s leadership in transboundary water decisions. New National Youth Platforms launched in Kenya and South Sudan give young people a direct role in shaping local development projects. Seven NDFs were trained to develop bankable project proposals, and a second cohort of 10 regional interns joined the NBD Secretariat.
Project management: Governance and safeguard systems are now fully active across field operations, alongside stronger financial and procurement controls. To build long-term self-sufficiency, NBD introduced a board-approved membership contribution framework for NDFs and brought on a fundraising consultant to lead a multi-year resource mobilization strategy.
Gender, Climate, and Fragile Settings
The project has made gender equity central to its work: 70% of the current intern cohort are women, gaining hands-on experience within the NBD Secretariat. Citizen-led monitoring in the Sio-Siteko and Mara wetlands is putting climate and biodiversity tracking directly into community hands, while nature-based solutions training helps riparian communities combat flooding and erosion using restored ecosystems.
In South Sudan, where security and institutional challenges are severe, the project bypassed centralized bottlenecks by working through the grassroots South Sudan National Discourse Forum—successfully establishing a national youth platform through local ownership rather than top-down channels.
Looking Ahead
Priorities for the coming year include launching full citizen data collection in the Sio-Siteko and Mara basins, convening a regional workshop for the Nile Women’s Network, recruiting a third intern cohort by September 2026, and rolling out NBD’s long-term fundraising strategy and NDF subscription framework.
Rwanda: Empowering Communities for Climate Resilience in Makera Watershed
Posted in : Blog on 2 February 2026
A new program – NCSCR – was created in 2025 by CIWA in partnership with the civil society organization Nile Basin Discourse: for water resources management to be effective, genuine community engagement is essential.
Taking the Nile Basin Discourse to the next level
Posted in : Latest on 12 February 2025
The new CIWA grant will help the Nile Basin Discourse continue elevating the voices of communities to policymakers while striving for greater financial stability.
Asia Namusoke: Making a difference for her Ugandan community and the climate
Posted in : Blog on 18 October 2023
Asia found her CIWA-funded training inspiring, prompting her to create small, but smart innovations that are transforming the lives of the women and youth in her community of Kampala, Uganda.
Southern Africa
Southern Africa
In many parts of Southern Africa, communities are facing recurrent and longer droughts. Drought resilience is strongly linked to access to groundwater and proper development and management of this resource. CIWA’s current engagement in the region focuses on the development of transboundary groundwater utilization and management capacity and is contributing to the development of a new drought risk management framework.
In many parts of Southern Africa, communities are facing recurrent and longer droughts. Drought resilience is strongly linked to access to groundwater and proper development and management of this resource. CIWA’s current engagement in the region focuses on the development of transboundary groundwater utilization and management capacity and is contributing to the development of a new drought risk management framework.
Water Security and Resilience in Southern Africa
The Challenge
Climate change is a growing threat to development across Eastern and Southern Africa, where about 70% of people depend directly on natural ecosystems and climate shocks are becoming more frequent and costly. With roughly 90% of Africa’s water resources shared across borders, managing transboundary basins—like the Zambezi and Limpopo—is essential to climate resilience, yet weak institutional capacity and poor coordination remain persistent challenges.
CIWA supports the World Bank’s Regional Climate Resilience Program (RCRP), which takes a flexible, demand-driven approach to regional cooperation—prioritizing national ownership while building trust and capacity across countries.
Progress
Innovative financing for the Okavango Basin: CIWA helped prepare a $10 million GEF grant to capitalize the CORB Fund, an endowment mechanism protecting the Cubango-Okavango River Basin (shared by Angola, Botswana, and Namibia). The fund aims to reach $20 million total, financing investments in nature-based tourism, renewable energy, and wetland restoration. CIWA is also supporting an institutional assessment of OKACOM’s eligibility for World Bank financing, expected to conclude in fall 2026.
Citizen engagement in infrastructure design: A flagship pilot in Mozambique’s Limpopo Basin is integrating community input directly into the design and maintenance of the Chókwè dike system, with strong government ownership and a dedicated citizen engagement specialist. Early results show engineers and communities aligned on priorities like river access and safety, with a new “Environmental Youth Champions” model emerging for long-term monitoring. If successful, the approach will scale to other dike systems. Similar engagement work helped resolve local conflicts that were stalling flood-risk studies between South Sudan and Uganda.
Analytics for major basins: An updated Zambezi investment study (with a focused Lake Kariba component) is nearing completion, highlighting the need for better coordination on reservoir operations and hydropower amid persistently low water levels—work that will underpin RCRP’s next phase. A parallel Okavango Delta livelihoods study is developing a decision-support tool to identify climate-resilient investment priorities, having completed key biophysical modeling and multiple stakeholder workshops.
RCRP implementation support: CIWA is helping build monitoring platforms to track project progress across countries, and completed a nature-based solutions analysis for South Sudan—proposing practical measures like floodplain restoration and green spaces to complement infrastructure investments. Similar work is informing coastal protection design in Comoros. Support for investment-ready infrastructure designs across Mozambique and Madagascar has built a pipeline of over $300 million in ready-to-finance projects, with $800 million more expected by mid-2027.
Gender in water institutions: In Mozambique, CIWA-supported Gender Action Plans helped Mozambique’s water directorate raise women’s representation among department heads from 25% to 50%. In Madagascar, a new Gender Action Plan is integrating gender considerations into water policy and community irrigation management. CIWA also helped ENTRO build gender-disaggregated data collection into flood-risk studies, surfacing findings on women’s flood vulnerability now shaping early-warning and evacuation planning.
Looking Ahead
Priorities for the coming year include finalizing the OKACOM and Zambezi studies and OKACOM’s IDA eligibility assessment (both by October 2026), continuing the Chókwè citizen engagement pilot, and advancing the next phase of RCRP focused on the Zambezi Basin.
Protecting the Cubango-Okavango River to support livelihoods
Posted in : Blog on 23 April 2025
Tracy Molefi is program coordinator at OKACOM. She and her colleagues are determined to promote sustainable development and management of the Cubango-Okavango River Basin while also improving livelihoods of communities.
Sustainable Groundwater Management in SADC Member States Project Phase 2
The Challenge
Southern Africa is facing a “poly-crisis” of simultaneous extreme weather events following the 2024 drought. Across the 16 Member States of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), climate volatility—swinging between drought and El Niño-driven flooding—is undermining agriculture and displacing communities. As of mid-2026, an estimated 38.8 million people across eight SADC countries face acute food insecurity, with conditions expected to worsen as a strengthening El Niño brings below-average rainfall into 2027.
Groundwater is a vital buffer against this volatility: 70% of the region’s population relies on it as their primary water source, yet only 1.2–5% of available groundwater is developed, and poor monitoring is driving localized over-extraction. With 40% of SADC residents lacking safe water access, groundwater holds real potential to close that gap.
CIWA, together with Global Environment Facility co-financing, supports Phase II of the Sustainable Groundwater Management in SADC Member States project, helping the region manage this critical resource more sustainably.
Progress
This past year was a strong one: grant disbursement reached 86%, 17 of 24 sub-grant projects are complete, and the program has reached over 189,000 beneficiaries—more than 88,000 of them women—across six Member States.
Capacity-building: With CIWA’s support, 11 National Focal Groups now operate across 10 Member States and Zanzibar, deepening national dialogue on groundwater management. The SADC Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI) has built 43 strategic partnerships—exceeding its target of 40—and implemented 92 joint initiatives. Its Young Professionals program has now trained 136 people across both phases, backed by a Community of Practice that has grown to over 1,000 members.
Knowledge and data systems: CIWA-supported platforms are becoming central to regional decision-making. The SADC Groundwater Information Portal now hosts over 2,300 resources and is piloting data-sharing with five Member States, while the SADC Groundwater Literature Archive has grown to nearly 6,000 records. CIWA is also backing groundwater vulnerability assessments in nine cities—from Cape Town to Kinshasa—and transboundary aquifer studies including the Tuli-Karoo, Shire, and Buzi-Pungwe-Save basins. Seventy-two percent of stakeholders report actively using the project’s knowledge products.
Community-level impact: The CIWA-backed sub-grant program has delivered 24 projects across Member States, 17 already complete, improving local water access and strengthening groundwater monitoring capacity. The remaining seven are expected to close by July 2026.
Looking Ahead
With CIWA’s support, SADC-GMI has built financial reserves of over $732,000—enough to sustain operations for roughly 1.8 years—and is now seeking about $30 million to secure its work long-term. The annual Groundwater Conference in November 2026 will continue to advance regional dialogue on shared aquifer management and climate adaptation, alongside a consolidated summary of Phase II’s impact across the region.
Reflections on the SADC-GMI Winter School: Lessons for a Sustainable Groundwater Future
Posted in : Blog on 4 September 2025
For two intense weeks, a young professional was immersed in a space of knowledge and exchange with lecturers, practitioners, and fellow participants drawn from across the SADC region—Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini. It was challenging, exciting—but above all, it was inspiring.
Groundwater at the heart of the Water Security Equation
Posted in : Blog on 22 March 2022
In light of World Water Day (March 22), James Sauramba, Executive Director of the Southern Africa Development Community Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI), turns our attention to the importance of groundwater.
Eswatini Drought Center of Excellence
Eswatini, one of the countries hardest hit by drought in the SADC region — with the 2015–2016 drought alone costing an estimated 7 percent of GDP — is emerging as a regional model for proactive drought resilience. Building on investments supported by the World Bank’s Eswatini Water Supply and Sanitation Access Project (EWSSAP), CIWA is supporting the country’s new Drought Center of Excellence (CoE) through the SADRI Phase II trust fund. Led by Eswatini’s National Disaster Risk Management Authority in partnership with the University of Eswatini, the CoE consolidates the country’s advances in drought monitoring, early-warning systems, and policy, and positions it to share lessons and technical support across Southern Africa.
The CoE was formally launched in September 2025 at the SADC Platform for Regional Drought Resilience Forum in Eswatini, a joint effort of the Government of Eswatini, SADC Secretariat, and World Bank, with support from CIWA, IWA, GEF, and GWSP. The Forum brought together roughly 70 participants in hands-on regional training and 150 delegates in high-level policy dialogue, and featured “Art Never Dries,” a community art initiative in which students explored drought resilience through murals, sculpture, and performance rooted in local and indigenous knowledge. Looking ahead, CIWA-supported work will advance a Drought Risk and Resilience Assessment across the Incomati, Maputo, and Mbuluzi basins, and continue the Drought Resilience Champions Program, a cross-country cohort of officials building skills and leading drought resilience efforts across the region.