David Malingha Doya
19 October 2008
Nairobi — East African countries are jointly developing a water management strategy to ensure sustainable supplies.
Dubbed the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), the strategy focuses on better allocation of water to various competing user groups such as industry, agriculture, and domestic use in consultation with all involved consumers.
The concept is premised on the understanding that competing demand for water within and among the various user groups can cause conflict and hurt economic growth as has happened among pastoral communities in northeastern Uganda and northwestern Kenya.
This concept is already spreading through the water management systems of countries like Uganda where, for instance, the ministries in charge of water and energy meet regularly to determine how much water should be released at Owen Falls Dam to run the turbines at the Nalubale and Kiira power stations in Jinja, while conserving Lake Victoria and River Nile.
Officials from the Ministry of Water and Environment confirmed that whenever they permit more water to be released to run the turbines, the government saves billions of shillings that would have been used to buy diesel fuel needed to produce more thermal power to reduce the country's power deficit.
Some 12 countries from this region under the auspices of the Global Water Partnership (GWP), a worldwide organisation supporting countries in sustainable management of their water resources, are developing the strategy taking into account available sources of water, competing uses and climate change.
Experts say it is important to understand these details so as to rate competing uses of water and be able to control water supply to ensure a degree of sustainability.
A status survey done by Global Water Partnership shows that only Uganda and Seychelles use over 15 per cent of total water withdrawals for their industrial sector, while all the other 10 countries use less than 10 per cent.
Despite Uganda being less industrial than countries like Kenya, it releases more water to the industrial sector because agriculture, the other competing user, relies mostly on rainwater, unlike other countries where agricultural fields are extensively irrigated.
Kenya and Tanzania use 79 and 89 per cent respectively of their water withdrawals on agriculture mainly because they have more farm land and irrigation potential compared with countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
Simon Thuo, GWP Eastern Africa regional co-ordinator, said that a template of this strategy to guide national water management policies will be presented to the African Development Bank this November for budget support to the 12 countries -- Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
All the East African Community member states have water policies either effective or still in legislation, although only Uganda's and Tanzania's provide for an environment of integrated water resources management.
However, difficulty is expected in introducing this concept immediately in some countries like Djibouti, Seychelles and Somalia because they do not have water policies.
A notable component of the strategy coming from a meeting of the countries recently is expected to feature harvesting flood-water to be stored and later used during times of drought. Insufficient storage infrastructure has been blamed for the suffering caused by the effects of floods and drought to millions of people in Africa.
Last year alone, devastating floods destroyed property and caused death of millions of people in 19 Africa countries.
However, a few years before last year's floods, the same countries mainly in southern Africa experienced unusually long drought seasons which also caused death of millions of people and livestock, which requires the strategy to seriously consider climate change.
"It is estimated that lack of proper water development and management is costing the continent 5 percent of GDP," said Mr. Mukaila Ojelade Uganda Resident Representative African Development Bank.
Mr. Thuo said that there is already a network for rain-water harvesting covering southern and eastern Africa. "The network provides the equipment needed for rainwater harvesting and gives technical advice, because as much as it is a good program, it can be disastrous if not done properly," Mr. Thuo said.
Maria Mutagamba Minister for water and environment has for long been advocating for rain water harvesting saying that disasters like floods which destroyed property and killed people in north eastern Uganda last year can be opportunities to capture and store water to be used in drought.
This strategy however faces a resource mobilisation challenge, because besides the African development bank, experts say that it has been had convincing financers to invest in integrated water resources management projects.
They say that most of the water related funds are being channelled to climate change, forgetting that coordinated management of water would significantly contribute to that campaign too, besides ensuring sustainable water supply.
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