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ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
Groundwater initiatives
gaining momentum
The buzz around groundwater is growing and excitement is bubbling
over as more of Africa recognises the growing importance of groundwater
as a sustainable resource. This is especially true in the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) region, which has been hard hit in recent
years by the devastating effects of climate change.
By the SADC Groundwater Management Institute
The unprecedented flurry of activity around
groundwater and groundwater management —
along with its impact on surface water — has seen
a resurgence of solution-based research, growing
literature, and media coverage across both traditional
and social media platforms. This has seen a long list
of projects mushrooming all over SADC’s aquifers —
underground layers of rock saturated with water.
The only way we can assess and understand the
extent of usage of groundwater is through collection
of data, and analysing the same. This requires that
groundwater monitoring systems are installed and
specific data sets collected for analysis to generate
decision-making information for managers and
policymakers.
Up to this point, such monitoring systems to support
this endeavour, are inadequate. It is therefore a vision
of the Southern African Development Community
Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI) to install
such monitoring systems at least in the most critical
transboundary aquifers.
SADC Groundwater Management Institute’s executive
director James Sauramba says it is hard to believe that
the strides made to increase awareness and include
more of the region's population in decision-making about
this strategic resource has only really intensified and
reached dizzying heights in the past three years.
Understanding the extent
and usage of groundwater
can only be achieved
through collection and
analysis of data that is
made available to decision-
and policymakers.
In general, access to groundwater in the rural and outlying
areas is through shallow wells and boreholes equipped
with a variety of water abstraction devices including hand
pumps, buckets, windmills, and even motorised pumps,
depending on the purpose for which the water is intended.
“One of our key mandates was to institutionalise
groundwater into existing water management institutions
within the region. We have made a lot of headway in
terms of working with the River Basin Organisations
(RBOs), and we have had some memoranda of
understanding signed with three of the RBOs.”
SADC’S SHARED WATER RESOURCES
River basins are portions of land drained by a river and
all the smaller streams that flow downhill from the area.
In SADC, there are 15 river basins that are shared
between two or more countries — the Congo River Basin
spans an area of 3.73 million square kilometres and its
water is shared by nine countries on both the Indian and
South Atlantic oceans. In Africa, the Congo River Basin is
second only to the much smaller (but longer) Nile River
Basin, which is shared by 10 countries.
June 2019 Volume 25 I Number 4
In the SADC region, however, an astounding 30
groundwater aquifers are shared between countries.
These aquifers, referred to as ‘transboundary aquifers’,
along with the 15 transboundary river basins, are a vital
source of life for the SADC community. About 70% of the
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