Managing water and food systems in the Volta and Niger basins

For many stakeholders on the ground, the Volta Basin Development Challenge (VBDC) of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food came to an abrupt end when the Program closed in December 2013. Many stakeholders were just beginning to see concrete evidence of how VBDC research results could contribute to improved management practices in farming communities.

In Burkina Faso and Northern Ghana, for instance, water managers and extension workers were excited about the new TAGMI tool and its potential for supporting decisions on investment and development of three agricultural water management technologies. In Ouahigouya and Koubri, located in northern and central Burkina Faso respectively, innovation platform members from rural communities were beginning to note some improvements in their access to technical and financial information for crop and livestock production. Meanwhile in Boura, in the central west region of Burkina Faso, stakeholders had begun to recognize the extent of the issue of deteriorating water quality in the Boura reservoir due to invading weeds and traditional farming practices around the reservoir. In Diebougou in southern Burkina Faso, the Bougouriba 7 local water committee members had just produced their first ever action plan following extensive consultations with various water management actors.

Small Reservoirs for Improved Livelihoods

The W4F project is one of five components being implemented as part of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and European Union-funded Water, Land and Ecosystems in Africa project (2014-2016). Water, Land and Ecosystems in Africa is a project of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems, with W4F taking place in the Volta and Niger region. The project will build on the research that was conducted under the VBDC, address research gaps and scale-up tested and proven solutions. Its activities are based on the premise that effective management of small reservoirs can improve livelihoods in socially and ecological vulnerable settings. Work will center around five work packages:

• Innovation and learning on water management for food production within and between the Volta and Niger basins—this work will constitute the backbone of the project and will result in the publication of several scientific articles, a mid-term scientific conference proceedings, a book on small reservoirs, policy briefs and technical guidelines disseminated to targeted audiences in the Volta and Niger basins.
• Improving understanding of the ecological resilience of small reservoirs in the Upper Volta River basin—this work will analyze the geographical diversity of small reservoirs including their spatial and historical constraints. It will assess small reservoir water quality and the link to anthropogenic pressures over time.  This work package will further investigate groundwater-surface water interaction around selected small reservoirs to establish how much of the water from the reservoir is retained in the groundwater and the potential yield of these shallow groundwater systems for productive use.
• Understanding livestock-crop-water interactions, the water productivity of livestock, and market opportunities for selected crop and livestock value chains
• Water governance in Burkina Faso—focusing on the scales of operation of Integrated Water Resources Management, the operationalization of a selected water committee, and the dynamics of water user associations’ use of wells. These analyses will be conducted in the context of recent water sector reforms in Burkina Faso.
• Improvement and upscaling of the TAGMI decision-support tool—including further development of the datasets that comprise the model and capacity building of development agencies to make use of the tool

Understanding Complexity

The W4F project aims to understand the social, political, economic, and biophysical complexities that are involved in the management of small water infrastructures to better support livelihoods in rural communities. Critical issues undermining effective management of small reservoirs for food production will be communicated to high decision-making levels. In turn, national and regional policies will be analyzed for their impact on lower decision-making levels.

The research team, composed of social scientists, soil scientists, animal scientists, ecologists and hydrologists, will engage farmers and their communities, extension workers, water planners and managers, financial and technical partners and other researchers through consultative meetings and multi-stakeholder platforms.  At national and regional levels, stakeholder engagement will be focused on financial and technical partners in agricultural innovation including FAO, CORAF, and ECOWAS as well agriculture ministries in Burkina Faso and Niger.

The W4F project will generate several outputs for use by various stakeholders for planning and decision making purposes. In addition to those listed under work package 1, a comprehensive database on water quality in small reservoirs and a database on feed prices will be developed. Project consultative meetings including community feedback meetings and multi-stakeholder platforms will contribute to increase understanding of critical issues undermining effective management of small reservoirs for food production, a first step towards the adoption of solutions proposed by the project.  The research project will also contribute to strengthening the capacities of development agencies to use TAGMI to better target investments in agricultural land and water management initiatives in appropriate locations in the Volta and Niger basins.

The majority of the fieldwork and research will be carried out in the Volta basin with potential up-scaling of results to the Niger basin.

On 29-30 May 2014 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a planning workshop was organized by the project’s lead institution, the International Water Management Institute. Proposed research activities were reviewed and project linkages, sites, milestones and deliverables were agreed upon.