Dr Kwaku Agyemang-Mensah, Minister for Water Resources Works and Housing, officially opened the 7th WACDEP Technical Coordination Workshop, emphazing “that for a sustainable development to be meaningful, water should be at the centre of every discussion and in every strategic plan”.

To meet this important challenge, he stated that “the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) through the initiative of the Ghana Country Water Partnership and the Water Resources Commission (WRC) has taken a valuable step to mainstream water security, as a cross-cutting issue in the national medium-term development planning framework for the 2014-2017 planning period”.

Mr Ben Yaw Ampomah, Acting Chairman of GWP Ghana remarked that GWP, through the Water, Climate and Development Porgramme (WACDEP), targets “to advance the agenda of promoting water as a key part of sustainable regional and national development, and to contribute to climate change adaptation for economic growth and human security”.

Acting Executive Secretary of GWPO, Mr Rudolph Cleveringa, said the partnership would strengthen the institutional capacities of about 18 countries to respond to their governmental projections of the SDGs, especially around water, and also start an associated programme on crop management, all of which could benefit from WACDEP. “Our last challenge is moving from advocacy to action and with that I feel very confident that the WACDEP vehicle is a proper choice,” he stated.

The technical meeting was attended by GWP representatives from regional and country offices, the GWP head offices in Stockholm, WACDEP References Group Members, and country representatives of the Africa Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) as well as implementing partners such as International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) and Pegasys. The workshop aimed to exchange lessons learned, share knowledge and technical coordination of the implementation of WACDEP GWP’s regions and countries. In particular, the workshop focused on achieving the following:

• Share progress, challenges opportunities and innovative approaches related to the implementation of the WACDEP in the countries and regions.
• Support the countries and regions in developing the 2016 WACDEP Annual Work plans with budgets for the regions and countries.
• Initiate the process of developing WACDEP Regional Project Documents (2016/17 – 2019) to support the expansion of WACDEP.
• Initiate the process to develop knowledge products from the implementation of the WACDEP.

The format of the 7th WACDEP Technical Coordination Workshop was guided by the following key meetings over the three days, tailored for different participants:

1. WACDEP Africa Technical Coordination and Annual Planning Meeting (5th – 6th October)
The 7th Technical Coordination Meeting comes at a time when the GWP regions and countries are in process of finalising implementation of WACDEP in 8 countries and expanding to 10 additional countries as per the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) EXCO mandate and reflected in the current AMCOW Triennial Work Plan 2014 – 2017.
2. Development of knowledge products (7th of October)
The WACDEP teams have over the past years been implementing a number of activities that need to be showcased and also lessons shared widely. This session will focus on coming up with a consolidated approach to developing key products from WACDEP implementation in Africa.
3. Ghana Investment Planning Meetings
This meeting will bring together the representatives from the NDPC, the WRC, GWP Ghana and the WACDEP Reference Group to jointly review and assess the implementation of the Investment Planning process in the White Volta Basin.

The workshop agenda is available online.