UT CE 397 - An Overview of Water Resources Planning in West Africa

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World Development, Vol. 17, No. 11, pp. 1717-1722, 1989. Printed in Great Britain. 030~75OX’89 53.00 + 0.00 0 1989 Pergamon Press plc An Overview of Water Resources Planning in West Africa MICHAEL S. GOULD and FREDERICK A. ZOBRIST* United States Agency for International Development, Cairo Summary. - Multilateral and bilateral donors have assisted regional water resources planning organizations in West Africa during the period since independence with limited success. Development of sound plans has been hampered primarily by lack of budgetary support, ineffective management, poorly defined objectives and inadequate coordination among donors. national governments and the planning organizations. It is recommended that donors coordinate their assistance to these organizations to carry out effective water planning by minimizing functional constraints through general budgetary support combined with sharing responsibilities for organizational management. The organizations should concentrate on regional planning and de-emphasize their involvement in project execution. 1. INTRODUCTION Regional water resources planning has been an important activity in West Africa during the years since independence. These post- independence efforts have been fundamentally different from the river basin development carried out during the colonial era. Major examples from that era are Office du Niger in Mali, Mission d’Amenagement du Senegal, and polder irrigation development in the Lake Chad basin. These agricultural activities were managed by colonial administrations and did not involve numerous donors participating in a multinational context directing their efforts toward multi- purpose basin development. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and several bilateral donors have worked to assist in the orderly development of the West African river and lake basins. Up to now, unfortunately, these efforts have not con- tributed significantly to the economic develop- ment of the region. The reasons for this failure include: (a) constraints to the planning process which make it difficult to develop effective master plans; (b) the difficulty in implementing regional projects in a multinational political setting; (c) poorly defined objectives, which at times are unrealistic; (d) inappropriate timing expectations; and (e) the desire for political rather than economic solutions. The United States government, through the Agency for International Development (AID) has participated in river basin development by funding technical assistance projects directed at water resources planning. The authors have been involved in these activities in various roles and believe that it is useful to provide an overview of the present situation assessing progress to date, and to offer recommendations. 2. BACKGROUND The UNDP and bilateral donors, such as France, West Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, became active in assisting African multinational water resources development planning organizations during the early 1970s. This assistance in West Africa was pro- vided primarily to the following river basin organizations: (a) Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMVS) [Sene,gal River Basin Development Organizatron] ; (b) Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Gambie (OMVG) [Gambia River Basin Development Organization]; (c) Niger Basin Authority (NBA); (d) Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC). These river basin organizations (RBO) were *Opinions expressed in this paper are the authors’ and do not represent the official policy of the Government of the United States of America. 17171718 WORLD DEVELOPMENT established by the member states (national governments) which share the water and land resources of each basin. Each RBO is institu- tionally unique despite the fact that member countries can be members of two organizations (e.g., Senegal in OMVS and OMVG). The mandates provided to these organizations are broad and officially include not only plan- ning, but also execution and operation of infrastructure projects. In reality, however, the national governments have not released sovereign rights to the RBOs, and the national ministries are the foci of water resources devel- opment in the member countries. (a) OMVS This organization was founded in 1972 and is made up of Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal. OMVS has been, from a political perspective, the most effective West African RBO. Through its efforts, in cooperation with the member national governments, OMVS has obtained the financing for two dams (Diama and Manatali) w-hich amounts to an investment of approximately $830 million (Nguyen, 1982). Although these dams have been criticized as being ill-conceived (Mounier, 1986), credit must be given to OMVS for facilitating this investment. AID funded an environmental assessment of the OMVS development program which iden- tified serious potential ecological and social impacts (Gannett ef al., 1980). The consultant concluded, however, that the benefits could outweigh the adverse effects if development projects were managed with concern for eco- logical and social impacts through incorporation of mitigative measures into project design. There is little evidence that this has taken place. At present, the OMVS is concentrating on the agricultural infrastructure which is needed to realize the benefits of river flow regularization. The improvements in navigation which were originally envisioned have not yet been acted upon and the user demand for the electrical power generated at Manatali remains uncertain. Lack of action in these areas reduces the pro- gram’s projected benefits and lessens the eco- nomic feasibility of the investments. (b) OMVG Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Senegal make up the member states of the


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