Page 110 - CIWA Water Data Revolution Overview Report

being available, this is easily updated. A comprehensive table of these data sources is

available in Annex 3.1.

3.2 Summary input data for the Volta River Basin

The Volta River Basin extends from the Sahel to the Atlantic Ocean across six riparian

countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire (Williams et al., 2016). It
stretches from approximately latitude 14°30'N in Mali to 5°30'N in Ghana and at its widest

point, longitude 5°30’W in Burkina Faso to 2°00’E along the Togo-Benin border. Flowing in a

north-southwards direction, the total length of the Volta River is about 1,850 km and the

drainage area of the basin is approximately 407,850 km2 with parts of Burkina Faso making

up about 42%; Ghana, 41%; Togo, 6%; Mali, 4%; Benin, 4%, and Côte d'Ivoire, 3% of the basin
(Boubacar et al., 2005). The Volta Basin consists of four main sub-basins: the Black Volta (or

Mouhoun, as it is referred to in Burkina Faso), White Volta (Nakambé), Oti (Pendjari), and

Lower Volta sub-basins. These subbasins make up 38%, 27%, 18% and 17% respectively of the
basin.

The population of the Volta Basin is largely rural and is projected to increase to over 56 million

by 2050- more than double what it was in 2010 (Williams et al., 2016). Economic activity is

largely reliant on natural resources, particularly water resources, with agriculture, fisheries
and livestock rearing being the dominant activities (Williams et al., 2016). Hydropower is an

important source of electricity in the basin and major hydropower plants in the basin are the

Akosombo (1020 MW), Bui (400 MW) and Kpong (160 MW) dams in Ghana, and the Bagre

Dam (16 MW) in Burkina Faso which have historically provided most of the riparian nations’
electricity (Ntiamoa-Baidu et al., 2017; Tsikata, 2008).

3.3 Summary input data for the Zambezi River basin

In developing the water accounts for the Zambezi basin, a range of dynamic and static data

was utilized to monitor key water resource metrics in the basin. Precipitation data for the

Zambezi basin was sourced from the CHIRPS v2 product, validated using available station

data, and was then bias-corrected. Actual evapotranspiration (ET) and reference ET were
obtained from the SSEBop v5 and GLEAM v3.6a datasets, respectively.