The Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) is coming to an end in late 2013, as will all Basin challenges of the Challenge Program for Water and Food (with the exception of the Ganges basin for another year). The Nile Challenge has generated many rich experiences that we hope will be taken up by CGIAR research programs (such as ‘Water Lands and Ecosystems‘ and ‘Integrated Systems for the humid tropics’).
The NBDC team organized a double event on 14 and 15 November to facilitate the transition to new programs:
- A dinner for very important persons (VIP) organized on 14 November to discuss the eight key messages developed by NBDC.
- A ‘Knowledge Watershed’ event at the ILRI campus on 15 November to look at past achievements, current observations and practices and possible next steps.
The VIP dinner was organized with 30 experts in land and water management in Ethiopia, including the State Ministers for agriculture, energy, water resources, and representatives from the World Bank, the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research etc. The dinner was squeezed between presentations of the eight key messages. The messages were presented in two batches of very short and compelling presentations, interspersed with the different courses of the dinner. The invited guests provided some insights about the key messages and were networked ‘in a different way’. An experience appreciated publicly by one of the state ministers and likely to be followed again for other programs.
Amanda Harding moderating the high level panel closing the Knowledge Watershed (Photo credit: Ewen Le Borgne / ILRI)
The Knowledge watershed was run the next day as a sort of share fair with about 80 participants spanning partner organisations and important actors in land and water management. An initial open mic session invited all participants to share what they considered major achievements of the NBDC. Then the eight key messages were presented and discussed around ‘scale stands’ representing the local (woreda/district), regional (sub-national) and national levels.
The Knowledge Watershed ended with a talk show inviting participants representing partners at woreda, basin authority and federal level to discuss next steps and what would happen ideally if a ‘new NBDC’ was to take place. The final cocktails allowed further networking and public thanking for all the actors that contributed to NBDC in the past years.
More information about these final NBDC events at: http://nilebdc.wikispaces.com/reflection5
Nile Basin Development Challenge 