The challenge of managing water in Ethiopia and in Senegal

Recently,  at Lausanne University, in the faculty of Geosciences and Environment, a series of presentations on the challenge of water in Africa took place. I gave a presentation on Ethiopia and my father on Senegal.
Below you can find my presentation, which tries to convince people that Ethiopia at least the Highlands does not suffer from water scarcity, as rainfall is higher than in many places in Europe, but the rain is very unevenly distributed. It also tries to show that there is a lot of knowledge about the known solution to the problem, namely rainwater management. The real challenge is to bring this knowledge on the ground. Research is in fact much more needed for knowledge transfer and communication. The presentation overflies the suite of knowledge transfer tool that the NBDC program component 3 on targeting and scaling out has developed and its impact on the ground, namely the new rainwater management concept, the Nile-Goblet tool and Happy Strategies game. (see output)


Here you can find my father's presentation on water challenges in Senegal. It presents the re-use of water for agriculture in peri-urban area. The reuse of water for agriculture is a great option. However urbanization is threatening agriculture. It concludes that in Dakar, the challenge is not water scarcity, but salinity, pollution and the lack of management.




This presentation series was a great opportunity to look into different African countries, their water issues and possible solutions. Both in Ethiopia and Senegal, it is not so much about water availability than it is about managing and governing water.