About

GWP’s VISION is a water secure world. Our MISSION is to advance governance and management of water resources for sustainable and equitable development.

OUR UNIQUE VALUE: GWP mobilises action on the global water crisis through a unique combination of social capital, shared values, credibility within the global water community, bottom-up orientation, and expertise. A network of networks, we ensure the ‘voices of water’ can inﬂuence local, national, regional, and global development priorities. We are committed to our role as a neutral convener and respected for our focus on inclusiveness and sustainability.

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GWP creates and communicates information about integrated water resources management which contributes to improved water governance and, ultimately, water security.

Together with our Partners, we provide knowledge resources and capacity building activities for solving water problems.

Partner

Institutional Partners are the basis of GWP's multi-stakeholder partnership. A strong, diverse partnership can bring about the changes needed to achieve a water secure world. In this section, learn about the benefits of being a Partner and meet a few who already are. We invite like-minded organisations to join us!

GWP Regions

This is where you can find links to the websites of our Regional Water Partnerships (RWPs). RWPs are closest to the countries where we work. They share knowledge and learning across national boundaries and are expected to have an open, inclusive, and gender-sensitive policies for bringing together as wide a group of stakeholders as possible to solve water problems.

West Africa

4/14/2011

Volta Basin Development Challenge

The Challenge Programme for Water and Food (CPWF) research in the Volta basin has been developed to respond to challenges in the river basin of “improving rainwater and small reservoir management to contribute to poverty reduction, and improved livelihoods resilience in Burkina Faso and Northern Ghana while taking account of implications for downstream water users including ecosystem services”.

GWP West Africa is one of the consortium partners of the project, together with the Volta Basin Authority, the Institut de l’environnement et des recherches agricoles (INERA) and the International Water Management Institute.

In March GWP West Africa took part in the planning workshop of the “V5” project “Coordination and Change” of the Volta Basin Development Challenge Programme on March 30-31 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Read more.

The Volta basin, drained by the Volta and its tributaries, lies in West Africa and drains into the Gulf of Guinea. The basin includes most of northern Ghana, most of western and southern Burkina Faso and well as portions of Benin, Ivory Coast, Mali and Togo. Lake Volta in Ghana is the largest reservoir in the world, extending from the Akosombo Dam in southeastern Ghana to the town of Yapei, some 400 kilometres (250 mi) to the north. The lake generates electricity, provides inland transport, and is a potentially valuable resource for irrigation and fish farming.

Five separate projects (V1 to V5) have been commissioned to be implemented in an integrated manner to achieve the stated goal. V5 is one of the five research projects which have been designed to respond to the Volta Basin Development Challenge (VBDC) to orient, align and integrate the VDBC to contribute to poverty reduction and improved livelihood resilience in the Volta basin. V5 in particular will improve coherence amongst the four other VBDC projects, and manage their interdependences and research protocols to smoothen the running of the programme and to ensure quality research outputs. Specifically, V5 will engage with policy makers and other stakeholders in the basin through strategic partnerships to create opportunities for end users’ feedback that will enrich the research process in all VDBC projects and, subsequently, the uptake of research outputs by end users.

GWP West Africa will bring support in the component “Fostering Change through Multi stakeholders Platforms” and in communications. GWP West Africa will play a major role in engaging with policy makers and other end users through its network of partners and allies and with its proven expertise in facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues, allowing for a two-way exchange between researchers and practitioners, one of the main goals of V5. Other partners include IWMI, Volta Basin Authority, the Water Research Institute of Ghana and INERA (agricultural research program in Burkina Faso).

Page last edited: 4/14/2011