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The NWRI in Nigeria continues to play a leading role in building capacity on access to water supply and sanitation

The National Water Resources Institute and AUDA-NEPAD Centre of Excellence, under its ACEWATER-III Human Capacity Development (HCD) activities, conducted a 5-day training on the topic: Climate Change Resilience: Access to Water Supply and Sanitation from 24th to 28th February, 2025. The training aimed to enhance participants’ capacity to address climate change impacts on water resources and sanitation services. Twenty-five participants from different stakeholders’ institutions across Nigeria took part in the training, and the resource persons were drawn from various fields of specialisation.

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Short course in river system modelling and planning

This week, the University of Khartoum is presenting an online short course in river system modelling and planning as part of the Human Capacity Development activities of the ACEWATER-III project. The short-course span two hours a day over five days between 24 February 2025 and 28 February 2025.

The programme is designed to give the 26 participants an opportunity to systematically understand Water Resource Systems Modelling, an overview of WaterStrategy and why Pywr and WaterStrategy are useful tools, creating a new Projects and model Networks, adding reservoirs and basic operating rules, exploring a model file in JSON format, and creating and running a multi-objective optimization formulation in Pywr. Participants also have the opportunity to present their projects at the end of the training programme.

While 82 applications from 10 African countries were received, a maximum of 26 practitioners and decision-makers were selected for the course from Sudan, Zambia, Togo, Senegal, Uganda, South Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.

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Supporting research capacity in East Africa

As part of the ACEWATER-III Project, the IGAD Climate Prediction & Applications Centre (ICPAC) in Nairobi, Kenya, hosted Dr. Mohammed Basheer from the University of Khartoum, Sudan between 17 to 21 Februray 2025. The visit fostered collaboration on climate data acquisition, downscaling and bias correction, while also exploring advanced water resources modelling.

Following the visit, Dr Basheer remarked: “I would like to thank Dr. Khalid Hassaballah and ICPAC for hosting me this past week. It has been a highly productive time, during which we laid the foundation for generating downscaled climate change data for East Africa, ensuring it accurately captures key hydrological characteristics. Thanks to ACEWATER III for making this exchange visit possible.”

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ACADEMIC PUBLICATION: Innovative trend analysis of long-term spatial-temporal rainfall patterns over Botswana: Implications for water resources management

As part of the ACEWATER-III project, the team at the University of Botswana, led by Prof Piet Kenabatho, recently published an article titled Innovative trend analysis of long-term spatial-temporal rainfall patterns over Botswana: Implications for water resources management

The study explores the utility of newer trend analysis methods, such as the innovative trend analysis method (ITA), to identify trends in seasonal and annual rainfall data using long-term rainfall data in Botswana.

The results were compared with those from traditional methods (TMs), such as the Mann-Kendall (MK) test and Sen’s slope (SS) methods. The utility of the ITA method has not been explored in Botswana and Southern Africa. Furthermore, rainfall variability is evaluated using the precipitation concentration index (PCI) method.

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Building capacity though the Africa Doctoral Academy and the ACEWATER III project

As part of the research and capacity development activities in the ACEWATER III project, five post-graduate students and staff from three AUDA-NEPAD Water centres of excellence attended courses offered by the Africa Doctoral Academy (ADA). The courses were offered between 22 January 2025 and 7 February 2025 and offered at Stellenbosch, South Africa The following colleagues attended courses across three weeks.

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Through the ACEWATER III project, the first basin-wide groundwater flow model of the Zambezi River basin has been produced

As part of the ACEWATER III project, the University of Zambia, with Prof Kawawa Banda as the lead, has produced this first basin-wide groundwater flow model of the Zambezi River Basin, using Feflow. The model can be used as a quantitative tool to conduct spatial exploratory analysis.

The article titled Zambezi River Basin aquifer systems: Opportunities and challenges in using freely available data sources and groundwater flow modelling for spatial exploratory analysis was published in in the Journal” Groundwater for Sustainable Development” and available from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352801X25000189

Prof Kawawa Banda appointed as the OR Tambo Professorial Chair in Water Conservation

The AUDA-NEPAD SANWATCE family is very proud to announce that Professor Kawawa Banda from the University of Zambia, has been appointed as the OR Tambo Professorial Chair in Water Conservation. The University of Zambia is focusing on inter-basin transfer between the Luapula and Kafue River Basin.

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GORILLA conference attendance by AUDA-NEPAD Water Centres of Excellence funded by ACEWATER III project (African Centres of Excellence in Water)

Between 27 November 2024 – 6 December 2024, partners in the ACEWATER III project participated in three events, as part of the GORILLA (Geographical Science for Resilient Communities, Ecosystems and Livelihoods under Global Environmental Change) conference in Kampala, Uganda. The events were hosted by Makerere University.

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