AgWA is an autonomous voluntary partnership that connects governments, donors, international, regional and national organizations and civil society to promote investment in Agricultural Water Management (AWM) in Africa. It generates synergies and provides multi-disciplinary technical support for improving AWM in Africa. In particular, AgWA is a cost-effective mechanism to provide support to CAADP-Pillar 1 processes at national and regional level.

Ever since 2010, when the partnership was formally launched with the establishment of its Secretariat, AgWA has had four Steering Committee/Partners meetings, the last of these was in Addis Ababa in March 2014.

The two-day meeting of March 2014 gathered representatives from different AgWA partner organizations such as FAO, WaterNet, IFAD, COMESA, IGAD, IWMI, CILSS, ARID, the Swiss Cooperation, the European Union and CARE International.

Participants reviewed the different activities implemented by the Partnership during 2012-2013 and discussed on future projects and activities for 2014-2015. In addition to this, governance and financial aspects of the Partnership for the next biennium were also open to debate.

At the end of the meeting, participants agreed on the way forward and the partners’ roles and responsibilities in the implementation of AgWA’s on-going and pipeline projects for 2014-2015.

These are:

• Support to the pre- and post-CAADP compact process for improved agricultural water management (Egypt, Malawi, Sudan and Swaziland
• Support to Agricultural Water Management in the Horn of Africa through the Partnership for Agricultural Water in Africa (Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda)
• Support to sustainable agricultural water management and the pre- and post-CAADP compact process in Burkina Faso, Morocco and Uganda
• Assessment of the impact of agricultural water management projects funded by the African Development Bank

In addition to this, cooperation agreements between AgWA and specific partners were discussed for the implementation of the following activities:

• AgWA is to work with ARID and CILSS on a proposal on Knowledge-sharing in Sahel to be funded by the World Bank.
• AgWA and CARE will work on producing a Biannual publication of the state of the art of AWM in Africa.
• AgWA, together with WaterNet, will work on the organization of a joint session at the WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA Symposium to be held in Malawi in October 2014
• AgWA will lead the creation of a Taskforce that will involve different partners, for the implementation of the decisions taken at the Eastern Africa Sub-regional Workshop on Addressing the Challenges of Water Scarcity in East Africa and Strengthening Resilience to Drought.