Land and Water Investments in the Eastern Nile Basin: Challenges and Opportunities for Regional Development

Since 2013, a team of researchers has been working on a research project entitled “Water politics in the Nile Basin – Emerging land acquisition and the hydropolitical landscape”, financed by the Swedish Research Council and implemented by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) and the Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences (SLU). In addition, SIWI and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) have worked in parallel on the same policy agenda, but focusing on the organisation of workshops to promote the exchange and dissemination of academic knowledge, and to establish bridges between research and policy/decision-making processes. The two teams have organised a number of international and regional workshops, namely in Stockholm, during World Water Week (in August 2013 and August 2016), Kampala (October 2013), Bahar Dar (August 2015) and Addis Ababa (May 2016).

Scope of this workshop
Building on the earlier meetings, the purpose of the workshop in Wad Medani remains similar: 1) to understand further how these investments are shaping the wider landscape of transboundary cooperation in the basin, and 2) how institutions can enable frameworks (economic, legal and institutional) that support more sustainable inward investment in land, food and energy resources in the Eastern Nile Basin region, within the broader context of transboundary and regional project planning and implementation.

Taking an open and constructive approach, the previous meetings have succeeded in shedding light on critical issues such as: 1) benefits and impacts of ongoing or planned investments (mainly large-scale agriculture and hydropower generation) in terms of water governance at local, national and regional levels through a number of selected cases; 2) the implications of these investments in terms of water withdrawal, allocation and management, and its transboundary dimensions; and 3) identification of stronger frameworks to support more effective land and water governance at regional/basin level. Findings and conclusions of previous meetings will be brought in during presentations, panel and plenary sessions.

This last workshop will be more forward-looking than the previous ones in the sense that it also aims to discuss how future research can be designed in order to assist policy-making at both national and regional levels in decision-making on increasing land and water investments in the basin.

Download the complete workshop agenda here.

For more information about the workshop please contact:

Dr. Ana Cascão
Programme Manager, SIWI
ana.cascao@siwi.org
+46 8 121 360 95