From 05 to 08 May 2025, a workshop is being held in Cotonou, Republic of Benin, on capacity building for the Decision Support Tool (DST) of the REWarD-Volta River project. The workshop brought together experts from the VBA’s National Focal Structures (SFN), the Global Water Partnership West Africa (GWP-WA) and the DHI consultant’s training team.
The representative of the Director General of Water Resources underlined the importance of this workshop, which will strengthen the capacities of experts from ABV member countries.
‘It is crucial to protect our natural resources, especially water’, he said, adding that the tools being developed will enable water to be managed more quickly and effectively, in terms of decision-making.
The Executive Director of the ABV, Robert Yaovi DESSOUASSI, called for a pooling of knowledge to prevent the impacts of climate change on the basin’s resources. He recalled that the aim of the workshop was to operationalise the knowledge base, which is a centralised tool to help decision-making, and also to develop visualisation interfaces. He took the opportunity to praise the synergy of collaboration with previous projects. This tool must be criticised in order to guide the consultant towards better improvements, and he took the opportunity to thank the GEF, the project’s financial partner.
For the Executive Secretary of GWP-OA, invited the experts of the countries that this reinforcement of capacity must be for them a mention to help the decision-makers to take good initiatives in the 06 countries of the basin. With the support of UNEP and DHI, GWP is establishing a knowledge database via a web platform for data sharing and visualisation. This workshop is a co-construction process with the consultant.
This REWarD – Volta River Basin project aims to reverse land and water degradation trends and support integrated ecosystem-based development by strengthening transboundary governance, restoration and conservation of these ecosystems for sustainable livelihoods in the Volta Basin.
The VBA, its member states and partners GWP-AO, UNEP and IUCN, using integrated ecosystem-based approaches for sustainable basin management, have initiated the project ‘Reversing Ecosystem and Water Degradation in the Volta River Basin / Inversion des tendances à la Dégradation des Ecosystèmes et des Eaux dans le Bassin de la Volta (Reward- Volta River Basin)’, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The four key components of the REWarD project are as follows:
- Component 1 : Improving the knowledge base and developing management tools for informed decision-making.
- Component 2 : Strengthening cross-border planning, coordination and regional and national capacities, including during extreme events linked to climate change and variability.
- Component 3 : Strengthening ecosystem resilience for sustainable livelihoods in the Volta Basin.
