The Nile Basin Initiative at the World Water Forum in Bali: NBI Leadership at the heart of transboundary cooperation

The 10th World Water Forum was held in Bali, Indonesia, from May 18 to 24, 2024. The theme of the forum is “Water for Shared Prosperity”. The World Water Forum is the leading international event on water issues, organized every three years since 1997 by the World Water Council, in partnership with the host country. It provides an opportunity for experts, decision-makers, academics and politicians to meet, discuss and decide on the future of water in the world, particularly in the context of climate change, which affects all water-related policies. 

For the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), led by its Executive Director Dr. Florence Grace Adongo and accompanied by a strong delegation, participation in this Forum had a specific objective: 

1. Meet with technical and financial partners to strengthen existing partnerships and create new ones 
2. Increase the organization's visibility through communication initiatives 
3. Promote NBI's achievements by continuing the celebration of the organization's 25th anniversary. 

Bearing these objectives in mind, the NBI delegation met with the World Bank team, led by Mr. Saroj Kumar Jha, Global Director of the Global Water Practice. The meeting provided an opportunity to strengthen the partnership between the two institutions and to consider future areas of collaboration, including the sharing of data, information and knowledge, as well as other potential areas that could be developed in the future with regard to transboundary cooperation around the Nile. 

Following the World Bank, the Executive Director of the Nile met with the UNEP delegation led by Dianna Kopansky, Head of the Ecosystem Unit, to discuss strengthening cooperation on (1) water security, environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation and transboundary water governance and finance. All these points follow the NBI's ten-year strategy 2017-2027. 

The NBI Delegation then met with DHI who came with its Vice President Mr. Stefan Szylkarski and its Partnership and Resource Mobilization Officer Ms. Louise Heegaard to discuss future areas of cooperation with NBI, notably, through a training and capacity building portal learning from the Bangladesh experience organized by DHI.

Pursuing the objectives set by the NBI, Dr. Adongo also took part, as President of ANBO, in high-level panels on transboundary cooperation, where she shared the institution's 25 years of successes and challenges.  These two major panels enabled the Executive Director to emphasize NBI's leadership in terms of transboundary cooperation in Africa, and how this experience can serve other African basin organizations. 

To conclude, the NBI organized its own side event entitled “The Benefits of Transboundary Cooperation in the Nile Basin”. This event gave the NBI the opportunity to highlight the institution and its successes over the past 25 years. For partners such as AMCOW, the AfDB and Nile Basin member countries, the NBI is an example of cooperation that needs to be strengthened and replicated in other ANBO member African basins that were part of the audience. 

Overall, the NBI's participation was a success in terms of the objectives set, namely strengthening the partnership, mobilizing resources and raising the NBI's profile and visibility. 

The Nile Basin made a positive contribution to the forum.