The six West African States sharing the Volta Basin held a working session to make a partial assessment of the work of the Volta Basin Authority (VBA) VFDM project. This was done through the second session of the project’s technical advisory committee held from 4 to 6 May in Benin at the Benin Royal Hotel in Cotonou.
Launched in June 2019, the VFDM project was initiated with the aim of strengthening the resilience of the six African countries sharing the Volta River Basin (Benin, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire) to the risks of floods and droughts. Indeed, since the 1970s, these states have been highly exposed to the effects of climate change, characterised, among other things, by extreme flooding and drought. It is in this perspective that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in collaboration with the Volta Basin Authority (VBA) and the Global Water Partnership for West Africa (GWP-WA) submitted to the Adaptation Fund the said project entitled “Integrating Flood and Drought Management and Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation in the Volta Basin (VFDM)”.
The objective of the project is to help the six countries of the Volta Basin to implement coordinated and joint actions to improve their early warning systems and management plans at local, national and regional levels. Therefore, after two years of activities, the representatives of the departments in charge of water resources, meteorology and civil protection of each country met to make a partial assessment of the progress of the work.
In other words, the aim of this mid-term review is to outline the progress of the project and initiate actions that can help achieve the objectives set. “We are meeting to evaluate everything that has been done so far and to give strategic orientations for further activities in order to really achieve the objectives,” said Martial Dossou, member of the VFDM technical advisory committee. During the three days of work, the voltalarm, an early warning system against flood and drought risks, was visualised. According to the participants, the voltalarm is a tool for producing alerts and controlling floods.
Furthermore, the installation of hydrometeorological stations in each country was discussed. This device is a set of sensors that record and provide physical measurements and parameters related to climate variations.
At the end of this regional meeting, “the results are quite satisfactory”, according to Martial Dossou.
Note that the VFDM project ends in 2023.
