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Southern Africa

the other global and transboundary The SADC-GMI has started rolling out Component 3: Building resilient
cooperation challenges. The SADC-GMI the Policy, Legal, and Institutional livelihoods and inclusive
is upgrading the SADC-Groundwater Framework for sustainable groundwater management
Information Portal (GIP) to provide more groundwater development. One of the
services to stakeholders by identified quick wins implemented This component focuses on creating
incorporating time series data, adding under the Policy, Legal, and Institutional more resilient livelihoods and inclusive
the ability to generate graphs, maps, and, Framework during the reporting period groundwater management by
where data is missing, apply big data is the review of the SADC Regional Water implementing sub-grant projects
analytics and machine learning to Policy (2005) to accommodate within member states. Twelve countries
generate useful information. Twenty-two groundwater and other emerging were allotted sub-grants of US$125,000
Young Professionals were deployed to regional priorities. each to implement groundwater
update the GIP. projects, which leveraged a total of
The annual SADC Groundwater $128,672 in in-kind country contributions.
The SADC Groundwater Literature Conference attracts approximately In all, the sub-grants are expected to
Archive (SADC-GLA) is one of the 150 participants across the region to benefit 251,653 people when completed.
most critical repositories of reports, facilitated dialogue on better
research materials, and documents integration of groundwater into the
on groundwater. This archive was management of transboundary
originally established by the British RBOs, more effective groundwater Over 70 percent of [SADC’s]
Geological Survey (BGS) under the monitoring systems, and regional population relies on groundwater
Africa Grey Literature Archive. The knowledge sharing. The previous as its primary water source, often
project has now migrated the hosting conference was convened in Namibia used without proper knowledge of
of the SADC-GLA database from BGS in November 2023, and the next will be the aquifer potential or monitoring
servers to give the SADC-GMI more in November 2024 in Lesotho. of its status and use.
control. SADC-GMI signed MoUs with
the University of Botswana, Mzuzu
University in Malawi, and the University
of Namibia to help acquire and upload
documents to the SADC-GLA. They
added about 500 documents including
scientific and technical reports and
research materials.

The project has recently developed
and tested a Numerical Model for
the Eastern Kalahari-Karoo Basin
Transboundary Aquifer (EKK-TBA)
and given it to technical personnel
from the Botswana and Zimbabwe
water authorities for use.

The SADC-GMI acknowledges that
one of the weakest links to achieving
prudent decision making for the
sustainable management of surface
and groundwater resources is the
absence of quality data. This triggered
it to initiate a pilot project to develop a
regional groundwater monitoring
network starting with a few strategic
aquifer systems to identify common or
unique parameters necessitating
monitoring in three types of
aquifers—mainland SADC TBAs, coastal
aquifers, and island state aquifers. Figure 7: Transboundary aquifers and river basins in the SADC region (Source: SADC-GMI)

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