Commissions of international river and lake basins are faced with a number of challenges, resulting from aligning the diverging interests of riparian states in dealing with the exchange of information as much as accounting for the effects of global environmental change. Effective governance at the transboundary level is therefore needed in order to deal with these challenges, especially in an African context.

This project aims to develop a set of Key Performance Indicators regarding the governance of river and lake basins at the transboundary level as well as with respect to technical characteristics of basin management.

The indicators will be specifically geared to the particular circumstances in African lake and river basins. In the African context, where national governments are rather weak in some cases, international coordination of water management can be crucial to ensuring sustainable livelihoods in those river basins.

In a second step, these indicator sets will be tested in order to support management processes at the basin level in selected basins.

After the initial discussions, which were started during a joint workshop in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in November 2007, three focused workshops were held with representatives from selected basin organizations.

Ecologic supported these workshops with representatives from international basin commissions in the Lake Victoria basin, the Orange-Senqu basin as well as the Congo River basin. The workshops were intended to facilitate the discussion about the indicator sets at the basin level and prepare the actual application of these indicators at the respective basin commissions.