New GIZ sustainable water resource management project launches in Zambia

The inconsistent availability of water resources and their inefficient use is one of the biggest challenges facing the Zambian agricultural sector and, in particular, smallholder farmers. Poor management of limited water resources is one of the main reasons why Zambia, despite its considerable area of arable land, falls behind in production compared to many neighboring countries.

Co-financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the European Union, the GIZ sustainable water resources management and agricultural water use (AWARE) programme aims to support the Zambian Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA) in enhancing climate-smart water resource management and efficient agricultural water use for smallholders in the lower Kafue sub-catchment. Taking a gender-sensitive approach, AWARE builds on GIZ’s previous sustainable agricultural water use activities.

As part of AWARE’s capacity strengthening component, together with NIRAS Zambia, NIRAS-IP Consult will set up 30 demonstration sites, showcasing good practices of efficient agricultural water harvesting, management, irrigation, and use. NIRAS will also develop a training methodology based on the ‘training of master trainers / training of trainers’ approach, and trainings will be rolled out to 11,000 smallholder farmers in the lower Kafue sub-catchment.

The implementation period is scheduled for a total of 37 months, from August 2019 until August 2022.

Check out the GIZ AWARE video: