CB-HYDRONET

Presentation

Managing water resources in the Congo River Basin involves problems of lack of appropriate information, lack of technical resources and the sheer scale of the problem. Sustainable water resources management in the basin is a critical issue, but there are always insufficient resources available to formulate adequate management strategies. Future demands of water resources in the Congo Basin are enormous. Not only do the nine riparian countries expect a large share, but so do other drought-plagued regions across Africa such as the Lake Chad Region. Despite its crucial position in the world, the Congo Basin has not yet received adequate attention for capacity development. There is a lack of a framework for practical and creative solutions on water related issues for the basin. Amid these complex water resources management issues, there is need of a framework for capacity building and awareness rise to support decision making of IWRM in the Congo River Basin. It is in this context that Congo Basin Network for Capacity Building (CB-HYDRONET) was established as per April 2013 (in Kinshasa, DRC) with the aim to support sustainable water resources planning, management and development in the Congo Basin and riparian countries through capacity building activities.

Since its inception in 2013, CB-HYDRONET has realised a great deal of effort to achieve the vision of sustainable water resources planning, management and development in the Congo Basin and riparian countries through:

• Strengthening the network and collaboration with the aim to establish a platform of knowledge management and capacity development in the region of the Congo basin and to develop strategies for collaborative activities and funding opportunities. In this regard, we succeeded to implement a number of representative nodes in different riparian countries of the Congo basin.

• Implementation of several capacity building and training activities with the aim to increase the capacities of stakeholders with regard to improved water resources management practices in the Congo basin.

• Knowledge sharing and dissemination with the aim to mainstream a framework of information sharing, develop training materials for knowledge management and support to the implementation of several ongoing and future research and investment initiatives in the basin.