Planning for Resilience in East Africa through Policy, Adaptation, Research and Economic Development (PREPARED) was a 5-year programme (2013-2018) funded by USAID, which aimed to strengthen the resilience of these fragile transboundary freshwater ecosystems and communities while also working to provide support for the development of more sustainable East African economies.
The 2017 African Great Lakes Conference, Entebbe, Uganda resolved to advance the African Great Lakes Information Platform (AGLI) (this platform) established by The Nature Conservancy. AGLI was created to promote research and collaboration and support decision-making to ensure the inter-generational sustainability of the lakes and their basins. AGLI will be hosted at the University of Nairobi and managed jointly with the African Center for Aquatic Research and Education.
Members of this project will host an applied, collaborative workshop which creates lake committees on each of the African Great Lakes. Each lake committee will consist of relevant freshwater experts to harmonize and prioritize research, guide regional research efforts, and facilitate communications between partner countries to positively affect freshwater policy and management using regular in-person meetings, the African Great Lakes Inform, and other relevant means.
In the face of stagnating wild fisheries in Lake Victoria and a rapidly growing human population, aquaculture may improve food and livelihood security in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Very recently, cages for farming the introduced Nile tilapia have been popping up on the lake at a rapid rate. While cage culture could provide food and income, there are many pressing questions: What will be the physical impact of cages on the lake's limnology? Will there be adverse effects for wild populations?
Dansk Ornitologisk Forening (DOF) and BirdLife partners in the South (Nature Kenya, Nature Uganda and Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN)), are running a three-year project that began in 2015. The project places a strong emphasis on promoting equality of women and their access to programme benefits and participation, addressing inclusion of indigenous and other marginalised groups, networking and strengthened influence of local civil society groups_and advocacy within the national contexts of programme partner countries.
The project component aims at bringing down the cost of production of the Lake Basin enterprises by promoting waste reduction and negative impacts as well as optimizing material, water and energy utilization through the application of Cleaner Production technologies and techniques. Reduced production cost should see the cost of products coming down while reduced pollution should result in improvement of the quality of water of the Lake.
The Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM), produced by IUCN and the World Resources Institute, provides a flexible and affordable framework approach for countries to rapidly identify and analyse forest landscape restoration (FLR) potential and locate specific areas of opportunity at a national or sub-national level. ROAM can provide vital support to countries seeking to move forward with developing restoration programmes and landscape-level strategies.
Lake Turkana is shallow, but it is the world's largest permanent desert and alkaline lake in the world. The lake water comes from river inflows and all water loss in the lake comes from evaporation. The lake's basin is sparsely populated and residents of the lake lack access to potable water, causing high rates of disease prevalence in the basin. These conditions are compounded by low literacy levels and extremely high poverty levels.
Lake Victoria is the world's largest tropical lake and the largest lake in the African Great Lakes region. The lake supports the largest freshwater fishery in the world, producing 1 million tons of fish per year and employing 200,000 people in supporting the livelihoods of 4 million people. The major threats to the lake are deforestation, land use change, wetland degradation and discharge from urban areas, industries and farmlands.
Adaptive management is an ongoing natural resources management process of planning, doing, assessing, learning and adapting, while also applying what was learned to the next iteration of the natural resources management process. Adaptive management facilitates developing and refining a conservation strategy, making efficient management decisions and using research and monitoring to assess accomplishments and inform future iterations of the conservation strategy.
Welcome to African Great Lakes Inform! Let's see how organizations are working to protect and maintain the African Great Lakes.
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