The North-West University’s (NWU’s) Mahikeng Campus has been chosen to host the Southern African Development Community (SADC) subsidiary, WaterNet during its 2022 to 2026 strategy implementation period.
WaterNet is a regional network of university departments and research and training institutes specialising in water. The network aims to build and strengthen regional institutional and human capacity for integrated management of water resources in Southern Africa through education, research, training and outreach. They want to achieve this by harnessing the complementary strengths of member institutions.
According to the NWU’s director for research support Prof Nenesi Kgabi the WaterNet secretariat will be based at the Mahikeng Campus, which strategically positions the office closer to both the seat of the North West Provincial government and the SADC secretariat in Botswana.
“The executive manager of WaterNet’s secretariat, Prof Jean-Marie Kileshye Onema, visited the campus on 20 May to initiate the official transition processes linked to moving offices from Harare in Zimbabwe to the NWU,” adds Prof Kgabi.
More about WaterNet
The WaterNet concept was triggered in May 1997 by the SADC-EU conference on the Management of Shared River basins in Maseru, Lesotho, where ministers of water from Southern Africa and Europe emphasised the need to “level the playing field” between riparian countries and to develop capacity building programmes in order to achieve this goal.
The University of Zimbabwe, the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development and IHE Delft (now UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education), jointly developed the concept of pooling of expertise among universities in the region that would allow for the establishment of a broad and multidisciplinary programme with specialisations tailored to a wide spectrum of postgraduate students. Other knowledge institutes joined and strengthened their collaboration in order to address the capacity challenges faced in managing the water resources of Southern and East Africa.
This concept came to be known as the WaterNet programme that was subsequently endorsed by the then SADC Water Sector Coordination Unit and the Global Water Partnership (GWP).
After extensive consultations in the region, 18 institutions founded WaterNet in March 2000 in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Since then WaterNet has grown into an independent network organisation with 72 members in 15 Southern and Eastern African countries.
From left are Prof Sonia Swanepoel, Prof Jean-Marie Kileshye Onema and Prof Nenesi Kgabi during Prof Onema’s visit to the NWU’s Mahikeng Campus.
