Water and agricultural sector development are at the core of the African Development Bank’s 2013-2022 Strategy in light of its twin objectives of achieving inclusive growth and the transition to green growth. The importance of water for health (water, sanitation and hygiene - WASH) and water for food (agricultural water management - AWM) has become more critical in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The evaluations in the area of water conducted by IDEV are central to the Bank’s African transformation agenda as envisioned in its Ten-Year Strategy 2013-2022 and its five priority areas. IDEV and the Vice Presidency for Agriculture, Human and Social Development (through the Agriculture and Agro-Industry and Water and Sanitation Departments) co-organized a learning webinar under the theme: “Integrating Lessons Learnt from IDEV Water Evaluations in Feed Africa & WASH Operations”. This two-hour virtual session, which took place on 30 July 2020, saw the participation of over 80 participants and aimed at providing a foundation on which to develop significant practical and replicable solutions to address policy and institutional constraints related to the Bank’s interventions in the water and agriculture sectors.
It was an opportunity for the participants to exchange ideas on the issues that emerged from the selected evaluations, the takeaways from the ongoing Bank’s Water Sector Policy development process and the interconnectedness between nutrition, water management and sanitation.
In her opening remarks, Wambui Gichuri, acting Vice-President, stressed the importance of lessons and recommendations from evaluations to inform both policy development processes and the design and implementation of operations. She noted that going through an independent evaluation and preparing the Management Response is a learning process in itself.
Joseph Mouanda, Chief Evaluation Officer at IDEV and task manager of all the water evaluations, presented ten lessons from the Water Sector (WASH and AWM) and Irrigation Evaluations. Following that, Oswald M. Chanda, manager in the Bank’s water and sanitation department, made a presentation on how to turn evaluation lessons and recommendations into action in water and sanitation strategies and operations. He argued that the primary entry point is integrating the lessons into business operations at various stages of the project cycle.
Soliman Wael, Principal Hydrologist at the Bank, presented some insights into the trends in the agriculture sector and their implications on the Feed Africa Strategy. Finally, Mamadou Kane, Chief Irrigation and Rural Infrastructure Engineer, made a presentation on special agro-industrial processing zones.
During the Q&A, participants asked questions about how the Agriculture department ensures balance between local demand and the international market in feeding Africa and how technology is linked or related to the digital agricultural flagship of the Bank’s agriculture Department. A participant commented that nutrition has to be included in project designs and cannot be an add-on.
An associated knowledge product from the Lessons Learning series is available for download:
Lessons from IDEV water and agriculture evaluations for AfDB Operations