Final report of the Workshop of the NEPAD WCOE held in Abuja on the 11_15-02-2013

 

The workshop held in Abuja, Nigeria from the 11 to 15 of February 2013 in the framework of the EC support project to the AU/NEPAD Networks of Centres of Excellence (Water CoE) in Western and in Southern Africa has been a real success for its contents and results.

Institutional partnerships have been discussed in deep between the Western African Centres of Excellence (CoE) and three regional African institutions: the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Senegal (OMVS). These organizations identified the CoE as a “think tank” able to support and influence positively the reflection on regional and continental policies and strategies, and to answer with their knowledge to the sector’s burning issues.

Fruitful ideas for collaboration have been presented and discussed during the session on research management and joint proposal development. The draft protocols for collaboration will be discussed during the next two months and presented at the next workshop for detailed definition. The procedures to work on the formalization of the protocols were agreed with the representatives of AMCOW, ECOWAS and OMVS and will be undertaken starting end of February 2013.

The stakeholder analysis of the Western African water sector presented at the workshop was carried out by four CoE, namely: The National Water Resource Institute of Nigeria, The University of Benin City (Nigeria), the KNUST University of Kumasi in Ghana and the UCAD University of Dakar in Senegal. The study, which was aimed at identifying the skill gaps, research areas and training needs in the Western African water sector, has been useful to provide recommendations on how the skills shortages in the water sector can be effectively addressed. The most common training needs identified for the region lay in technical fields such as borehole maintenance and rehabilitation, geophysical investigation techniques, drilling technology, remote sensing and GIS, water treatment techniques as well as in cross-cutting issues such as governance and water economics etc.

Improving CoE’s capacities on research management and impact of research results on the society has been one of the main activities of this workshop and an entire session was dedicated to this thematic through a training course managed by Dr. Peter Furu of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). The training course had four objectives: coordinate existing water for development research, establish good research management practice, improve the user of research in policy and practice and establish joint funding activities.