The partnership for Agricultural Water Management in Africa (AgWA), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a 5-day thematic Workshop of the Entry Phase of the Project “Strengthening Agricultural Water Efficiency and Productivity on the African and Global level”.

The project, funded by the SDC, will be implemented by FAO together with AgWA with the overall goal to reduce hunger and poverty in three pilot African countries - Burkina Faso, Morocco and Uganda - by improving Agricultural Water Management (AWM) practices and mainstreaming them in national policy frameworks and processes. The project addresses 5 important themesrelated to AWM: (1) Water accounting; (2) Crop water productivity; (3) Water harvesting for agriculture; (4) Agricultural water policy; and (5) Water use efficiency.

The workshop developed around those 5 themes and gathered around 50 participants, including national and international experts, the project task forces from the three pilot countries, as well as the FAO technical team and the AgWA coordination unit. 

This entry phase event was an occasion to:

• Introduce and gather main actors involved in the implementation of project activities;
• Present and discuss the main findings and conclusions of the thematic background country reports;
• Explain FAO’s work approach per theme;
• Collect feedback from participants on each thematic project component (accounting, efficiency, harvesting, policy and productivity); and
• Agree on the changes to be incorporated in the final Project Document.

The final output of the project was a finalized comprehensive Project Document, integrating the 5 themes in an integrated way and fully endorsed by all relevant stakeholders.