In the Senegal River Basin, water is shared amongst a range of livelihood-related sectors in the region: agricultural and agro-pastoral zones, fisheries zones, municipal water supply and hydropower. In the riparian countries, water scarcity relates primarily to a lack of infrastructure and capacity to access much of the available water, rather than physical water scarcity. Water withdrawals along the Senegal River remain relatively low, thus the development of water infrastructure to facilitate greater exploitation of the available water resources may help to reduce levels of water scarcity.

As a result of previous and current projects and programmes implemented in the Senegal River Basin, progress has been made in relation to cross-boundary water management and infrastructure development. Most recently, under the Multi-Purpose Water Resources Development Programme (PGIRE), support was provided to improve multi-sector planning (particularly across agriculture, fisheries and hydropower). One output of this programme was the production of the Master Plan for Water Resources Management on the Senegal River (SDAGE), which aims to advance water resources development, while mitigating the negative impacts of socio-economic development. However, several activities related to priority areas of the SDAGE are yet to be implemented, due to a number of technical and capacity gaps constraining OMVS.

To fill in critical technical and capacity gaps, the project aims to enhance cross-boundary Water Resources Management in the Senegal River Basin Region, with the following expected outcomes:

• Improved OMVS and countries capacities for multi-objective water resources management;
• Established hydro-economic model for the Senegal Basin and increased understanding of benefits of joint water resources management;
• Identified cross-boundary investment areas; and
• Assessed trade-offs between water for energy production and water for agriculture/fisheries development.