Author: RWSN Secretariat

  • Africa Rocks! @WEDC 40
    Africa Rocks! @WEDC 40

    Over the last year, the UPGro Knowledge Broker and RWSN team has been on tour promoting the potential of Africa’s groundwater as a catalyst for tackling poverty and the practical challenges of improving scientific understand and professionalism of implementation. These “Africa Rocks!” sessions in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire), Livingstone (Zambia) have showcased…

  • Groundwater – the earth’s renewable wealth
    Groundwater – the earth’s renewable wealth

    By Sean Furey, Skat Foundation/RWSN/UPGro Where does wealth come from? At its most basic, it is the difference between how much you invest in a product or service and how much you get from selling it. If the difference is positive you get wealth, if it is negative then you get trouble. For a country…

  • Groundwater monitoring established in the Upper Great Ruaha Basin, Tanzania
    Groundwater monitoring established in the Upper Great Ruaha Basin, Tanzania

    Re-posted from GroFutures.org The GroFutures team at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA, Tanzania), led by Japhet Kashaigili (SUA) with support from PhD students, Hezron Philipo (SUA) and David Seddon (UCL), established in July (2017) a groundwater-level monitoring network in the Upper Great Ruaha Basin Observatory in southern highlands of Tanzania.  This area is part of the Southern Agricultural…

  • Ethiopian farmers and households have their say on their groundwater needs
    Ethiopian farmers and households have their say on their groundwater needs

    re-posted from: Grofutures.org The GroFutures team in Ethiopia has recently completed a survey of 400 households from predominantly agricultural communities within the Becho and Koka Plains of the Upper Awash Basin of Ethiopia; there are the same communities where the GroFutures team recently constructed and deployed new groundwater monitoring infrastructure. The team of social scientists, led by Yohannes Aberra of…

  • Reaching out with Radio — BRAVE’s radio programmes for African farmers

    Radio is arguably one of the most important, cost-effective sources of information for the majority of rural farmers in Africa. Along with farmer field listening groups and multi-stakeholder groups agri-educational radio programming addresses the training needs of smallholders by establishing a dialogue directly with rural farming populations, delivering live, relevant and real-time updates on issues […]…

  • Professor Yahaya Nazoumou: Groundwater central to Niger’s climate change resilience
    Professor Yahaya Nazoumou: Groundwater central to Niger’s climate change resilience

    re-posted from GroFutures [INTERVIEWER] Dr. Mohammad Shamsudduha or “Shams”, GroFutures Project Manager: thank you Professor Nazoumou for taking the time to discuss your involvement in GroFutures and how your work in the Iullemmeden Basin is making an impact on the government policies and practices of the water resources development and management in Niger. [INTERVIEWEE] Professor…

  • World Bank: Hidden and Forgotten: Managing Groundwater in Southern Africa

    from The World Bank STORY HIGHLIGHTS People in southern Africa are largely dependent on groundwater shared between countries and communities for health and well-being, food production, and economic growth. As climate variability alters the amount of surface water that is available, people in the region are increasingly turning to groundwater, which is already challenged by…

  • New UPGro studies explore links between groundwater and poverty in rural and urban Africa
    New UPGro studies explore links between groundwater and poverty in rural and urban Africa

    Thanks to additional support from NERC at the beginning of 2017, some of the world’s leading experts on groundwater and poverty were brought together to test the assumptions that we make about how much we know and understand about the links between groundwater access and poverty. Does improving groundwater access reduce poverty? Or are their…

  • New – Water point failure in sub-Saharan Africa: the value of a systems thinking approach
    New – Water point failure in sub-Saharan Africa: the value of a systems thinking approach

    The latest output from the UPGro programme comes from Cambridge University as part of the “Hidden Crisis; Unravelling past failures for future success in Rural Water Supply” and examines the role of system-based analysis in understanding the root causes of the success or failure of rural water points. The full open paper is available to…

  • Africa Groundwater Atlas – your opinion / votre avis
    Africa Groundwater Atlas – your opinion / votre avis

    Dear colleagues / Chers/Chères collègues (texte en français ci-dessous) Some of you may already have seen and used the Africa Groundwater Atlas. This is a new online resource with groundwater information for all African countries. It is linked to the Africa Groundwater Literature Archive – an expanding online repository of documents on groundwater in Africa.…