On Wednesday, 5 April 2023, His Excellency Dr. Hussein Ali Mwinyi, President of Zanzibar and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, formally received the Global Water Changemakers Award which had been presented to him in absentia during the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York.
Four co-chairs of the International High-Level Panel on Water Investments for Africa; H.E Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal and Chair of the African Union, H.E Hage Geingob, President of Namibia, H.E Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands and H.E Jakaya Kikwete, Former President of the Republic of Tanzania have each received the Presidential Global Changemakers Award for demonstrating high level political commitment and leadership for climate resilient water security in Africa.
Four Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States have commended the SADC Secretariat for taking the lead in the fight against communicable diseases, including COVID-19 and cholera, through the installation of handwashing facilities at border crossings.
The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) and Global Water Partnership Africa have renewed their partnership to transform water investments in Africa.
Global Water Partnership and the Government of Tanzania are working on strategies that will improve the country’s management of water resources, with the aim of increasing water security and improving the economy.
For the past 10 months, Malawi has been battling a cholera outbreak which health authorities have classified as the worst in decades. The outbreak has so far claimed over a thousand lives and recorded over 25,000 cases as of January 2023, with the case fatality rate standing at 3.3% as opposed to the less than 1% recommended by the World Health Organization.
The Government of Eswatini says the private sector needs to get involved in climate action to protect their own as well as the nation’s investments from the impacts of climate change. Government data shows that 80 percent of surveyed private sector enterprises reported that their businesses had been impacted by climate-related events, most of which had involved extreme and erratic rainfall and drought.
Southern Africa is endowed with a complex network of river systems, which are formed extensively from shared watercourses. 15 of the river basins within the region are shared between one or more countries, 13 of which are shared fully within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Cooperation is needed to promote sustainable management, development, and use of these shared water resources. This was one of the recommendations given during the special session on river basin organisations convened by SADC, OKACOM, and GWPSA on 20 October 2022 at the 23rd WaterNet/ WARFSA/ GWPSA Symposium.
The Continental Africa Water Investment Programme - Gender Transformative Water, Climate and Development (AIP WACDEP-G) Programme has brought to the fore the need for African governments to address issues of gender inequality if they are to effectively achieve water security and climate resilience.