Playing to win: managing water in Tanzania
Related pages: Tanzania
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Environment |  DFID
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Image courtesy of Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit
A table-top game and interactive computer model are helping farmers and water
planners to share and manage scarce water supplies in the Usangu wetland of
Tanzania, in an innovative project co-funded by DFID.
The River Basin Game formed the basis of workshops run by Sokoine
University of Agriculture. By taking part in the game - a wooden table-top
construction of the river basin - people were encouraged to think about water
management and how it impacts on different users in the river basin.
The computer model helps water managers and planners to evaluate the economic
and environmental impact of different water management regimes - and their
effect on local livelihoods.
Both tools were developed as part of a four-year project called RIPARWIN
(Raising Irrigation Productivity and Releasing Water for Intersectoral Needs).
The project brought together researchers from the UK's
University of East Anglia, Tanzania's Sokoine University and the
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), who worked with local
communities, river basin managers and non-governmental organisations to explore
ways to improve water management.
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More crop per drop
Image courtesy of Wildwatch
Water management has become a pressing problem in the river basin: over the last
decade the wetland has shrunk and the Great Ruaha River - which runs through the
region - now dries up completely during the dry season.
The scarcity of water has led to conflict among the farmers, cattle-keepers
and households who live downstream of the river - and the rice producers who
live upstream. The project showed how improved irrigation could help rice
producers grow more crop per drop, and so free up water for other users, while
canal regulation means that water now reaches downstream users for a longer
period during the dry season.
It also started a dialogue between people living in the river basin who
depend on irrigation for their livelihoods - the River Basin Game was an
important tool in this.
As a result poor people now have a better understanding of the role of
irrigation productivity and water management, and of the importance of saving
water while maintaining rice production in the river basin.
More details from the Infrastructure
Connect website
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Key facts
The project's tools and strategies are helping Tanzanian policymakers and
water managers better understand and address the needs of the different water
users in the basin.
Further afield, river basins in Africa and Latin America experiencing similar
problems are looking at the project to see what they can learn from it.
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