The selected African Use Cases under the WWQA comprise: Cape Town Main Aquifer Systems; Lake Victoria transboundary lake basin, and the transboundary Volta River basin. This report focusses on the Lake Victoria and Volta Basin Use Cases.
Aim
The Use Cases are funded as a pilot to demonstrate the value added of an Alliance approach to bridge from data to solutions. The central aim in the initial WWQA Africa Use Cases is the integration of in-situ and remote sensing-based Earth Observation and water quality modelling data to derive the best possible current state of water quality combined with a multi-stakeholder driven process defining demand for water quality services. The ultimate objective was to provide an evidence base that links water quality hotspots to solutions and investment priorities. These results emanating from this approach are due to be shared widely with the World Water Quality Alliance partners for further consideration and illustration of the approach.
This report summarises the stakeholder engagement process, data availability, and identification of water quality products and services to address the problems identified through the stakeholder engagement and data assessment process in the Volta Basin. It concludes with summarizing some of the main limitations encountered when trying to access data, and with lessons learned and recommendations regarding the way forward. The full report provides details on these various stages and presents the data collected on water quality and used for the Use Case.
Methodology
Requests for stakeholders and/or data for the Use Cases were sent to relevant working groups carrying out the World Water Quality Assessment as case information. Using the contact details received, these stakeholders identified by the World Water Quality Alliance were then in turn also contacted requesting both data and any additional stakeholders (snowball mechanism), which continued as an iterative process. In addition, a thorough literature review of stakeholders and data was conducted. Through this process, available data (in-situ, modelled, RS/EO) for the Use Cases was collected and shared with the expert teams in charge of the triangle approach in the World Water Quality Assessment (EOMAP, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, and Ruhr University Bochum). In addition, a database of stakeholders and their interest in collaboration was developed, shared with the Alliance community of practice, and enhanced throughout the project. The stakeholder engagement process to identify the key water quality concerns and the need for associated water quality products and services took various forms for the Volta Basin Use Cases. This included:
- Attendance at conferences/symposia in Ghana,
- The convening of a Stakeholder Engagement Workshop in Accra, Ghana with the assistance of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies (IESS) University of Ghana.
