WaPOR project meeting was held in Nairobi, Kenya, with FAO team, international project partners and data service provider

FAO’s WaPOR team, together with the international project partners International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and the data service provider eLeaf met last week in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss project updates and tools and applications of WaPOR in each of the 13 countries of the project.
The meeting was held from Tuesday 26 to Friday 29 November 2024 and was attended by 27 onsite participants. 20 more attendees joined the meeting online.
Hamisi Williams, Assistant FAO Representative of FAO Kenya, welcomed the participants to the meeting. Pim van der Male, First Secretary of the Dutch Embassy in Kenya, participated on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands, which provides financial support to the project.
The meeting allowed the participants to reflect on the components and main activities of the project, with a special focus on the spatial database, the new WaPOR Catalogue of applications, capacity development activities, and the compendium of implementable solutions and tools.
More specifically, the international partners and country coordinators presented the tools and activities developed under the following topics: Irrigation performance, Groundwater abstractions, irrigation scheduling, drought monitoring and water availability and use.
On Wednesday, 27 November, the participants visited the Mwea irrigation scheme, one of the more than 20 high-resolution areas at level III (20 mt resolution) available on WaPOR portal. The team met the Scheme Manager, Dennis Okinyi, from the National Irrigation Authority (NIA), and presented two use cases of WaPOR data in Kenya: (i) rice yield estimation and (ii) irrigation performance tool for the scheme. The presentation highlighted how WaPOR could support and facilitate data-driven, evidence-based decision-making.
On Monday 25 November, FAO’s WaPOR project team, including coordinators from WaPOR countries, had previously met at the United Nations complex in Nairobi to discuss the project communication at the country and corporate level, the activities in the upcoming years and challenges in each country.