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Southern Africa

Strengthening Transboundary

Basin Organizations through

Program Development and

Capacity Building in Africa

Context
limate change poses a major it is critical for addressing growing opportunistic approach set within a clear
C
threat to long-term development water, food, and energy shortages. The regional framework and theory of change.
objectives in Eastern and Southern risks of non-cooperation are high, as The project explicitly draws lessons from
Africa, especially poverty reduction in most water comes from transboundary the past decade of transboundary water
highly vulnerable regions. The danger of rivers, and water use in one country may resources programs in Africa (e.g., Nile,
climate change to the two regions’ negatively affect availability and quality Niger, Zambezi), considering the need for
economic growth and poverty reduction in neighboring countries. For instance, climate-resilient water investments to
comes from two fronts: (i) the livelihoods severe degradation in the Shire River have a more nimble, sequenced
of about 70 percent of Africans are highly Basin in Malawi exacerbates flooding in approach to transboundary benefits;
dependent on ecosystem services and the Zambezi region of Mozambique. reflecting national priorities; and ensuring
(ii) climatic shocks are draining fiscal Only coordinated transboundary strong buy-in.
resources and particularly affecting poor solutions can help reduce the risk of
people, who have less resilience than climate-related disasters. The grant has two components: (i)
others. Drought frequency has increased resilience planning and prioritization of
six-fold and flood frequency 10-fold in CIWA’s new grant, Strengthening investments in transboundary waters by
recent years. Given the urgency posed Transboundary Basin Organizations supporting RBOs and (ii) programmatic
by climate change, the African Union through Program Development and support to promote the climate resilience
2022 Climate Change Strategy and Capacity Building in Africa, is agenda by strengthening national and
Action Plan calls for (i) increased regional supporting the World Bank’s sub-national water resources institutions,
collaboration on climate action and implementation of the Regional Climate including support to the RCRP. This grant
(ii) a regional platform to scale up Resilience Program for Eastern and complements the CIWA-funded South
investments in resilience, including Southern Africa. RCRP is a regional Sudan Transboundary Waters Support
through transboundary water IDA-funded multiphase programmatic Program, which supports the
management. approach that promotes a bottom-up implementation of the RCRP in South
and demand-driven strategy for regional Sudan (described above).
Improving transboundary WRM is cooperation and aims to increase
critical to increase the adaptive resilience to regional water-related Component 1 will include:
capacity of countries in the region. climate shocks. Phase 1 includes
Impacts of climate variability and Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique, 1. Institutional diagnostics of RBOs in
climate change have rippling effects South Sudan, the NBI, and SADC; Phase RCRP countries. The objective is to
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across borders, impacting ecological 2 includes Malawi and the African Union. 37 identify a pathway to make RBOs
services and economies. Regional more sustainable, better able to
cooperation on the main transboundary Advancing regional cooperation in mobilize investments (including
water systems (e.g., Nile, Okavango, climate resilience is a complex, climate finance and private-sector
Zambezi, Limpopo) to improve drinking high-transaction cost process that financing), and increase their
water, food, energy, biodiversity, climate needs to be driven by strong and effectiveness. It will include an
change resilience and mitigation, and job focused national buy-in. This in-depth assessment of the rules
security can be further developed. In fact, requires an incremental, flexible, and (legal mandate), organizations

36 https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P180171
37 https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P181308 64