The Executive Secretary of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) Dr. Ally Said Matano, and the Executive Director of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), Professor Seifeldin Hamad Adballa, held bilateral discussions and agreed to deepen cooperation between the two basin organisations in the Nile Basin.
The meeting between two organisations held on 23d October 2020 also reflected on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2006 establishing the framework for cooperation and efficient management and sustainable development of the Lake Victoria Basin and its natural resources.
The October (2020) meeting also sought to bring the cooperation to a higher level by agreeing to jointly use water information systems, data acquisition and sharing for mutual benefits of countries they represent. The Nile Basin is shared by Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda while Lake Victoria Basin is shared by Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. The Nile is one of the world’s longest and most iconic rivers with a drainage basin that covers almost 10 percent of the land-area of Africa.
Strengthening cooperative water management between LVBC and NBI can also help countries to reduce their climate and water-related risks such as flood, drought, water pollution and loss of critical ecosystems that support biodiversity.
The joint cooperation between NBI-LVBC spans many years covering sectoral and programmatic areas and the two institutions are pursuing more joint programmatic efforts to reverse climate related risks and hazards in their respective basins.
As such, the two leaders of the sister institutions concurred that by working together both institutions will become stronger, better able to face the challenges in improving the environment and managing the water resources both directly along the lake but also upstream in the catchment area.
The first step is to work within the framework of the LVB Integrated Water Resources Management Programme and establish the foundations for joint use of the NBI Nile Basin Decision Support System.
To this aim, the ES and ED cleared the way for technical teams of both institutions to engage in a series of meetings to agree how to move forward, and resolve any issues that may exist.
As an emerging approach to sustainable development in two basins, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is being supported by the European Union and German Government.