What: Signing Ceremony for a Memorandum of Understanding to Rehabilitate the Lake Chad Basin
Who: African Development Bank, Lake Chad Basin Commission
When: Saturday, 17 February 2024; 16:30 - 18:00 EAT
Where: Sheraton Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
On the sidelines of the 37th African Union Summit, the African Development Bank and Lake Chad Basin Commission will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the rehabilitation of the Lake Chad Basin. It will cover efforts to mobilize resources for infrastructure development and strengthen institutional capacity.
Dr Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, and Ambassador Mamman Nuhu, Executive Secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, will sign the MOU. Heads of State from regional countries are expected to attend the ceremony. Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, African Development Bank Vice President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, will moderate.
Under the MOU, the Bank will use its convening power to mobilize investments and technical resources to rehabilitate the basin's degraded basin ecosystems, enhance climate-smart water resource management and development and consequently improve livelihoods.
Since 2005, the African Development Bank has financed multinational projects, up to $241.3 million in the water, transport, environment, and social sectors in the basin.
Once the world's sixth largest inland body of water and covering about 25,000 km², Lake Chad began shrinking significantly in the 1970s due to climate change and variability, population growth and anthropogenic activities. This ongoing shrinkage, coupled with extreme rural poverty and high rates of youth unemployment in the countries abutting the lake--Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad-- threatens the wellbeing of an estimated 45 million people in the lake basin who depend on it for food, and about 2 million people who live along its shorelines.
The Lake Chad Basin Commission, an intergovernmental organization that oversees water and other natural resource usage in the basin, has eight member countries: Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Algeria, the Central African Republic, Libya, and Sudan.
