Innovation in Progress: the power of collaboration in forecasting water availability and demand in Southern Africa (GLOW)

How do we address Southern Africa’s increasing water security challenges?

One effective approach is to develop a water availability and demand decision-making tool designed by users for users. The GLOW consortium – Global Water Availability Forecasting Service – has been diligently working on such an instrument. Matthew Damons, Water and Environmental Scientist at Emanti Management, shares his thoughts about the collaboration between the two partners. Their key to success? “Open dialogue with their cross-border partners and stakeholders.”

From his office in Stellenbosch, South Africa, Matthew Damons calls in to discuss the key components of the successful collaboration within the GLOW project, which is funded by Partners for Water. Matthew is an environmental and water scientist at consortium partner Emanti. This water and environmental engineering company specialises in managing the risk and vulnerability aspects of water, sanitation and health.

“Together with our Dutch partners Hydrologic and FutureWater, we’ve established a synergistic collaboration in which the partners combine their strengths,” says Matthew. “Our aim? To develop an operational service that provides timely and easy access to water availability and demand forecasts for South Africa’s, Eswatini’s and Mozambique’s resource systems.”

Consortium partners’ roles

As a local partner, Emanti’s role is to support the user and system requirement analysis by engaging with stakeholders to understand their needs for the GLOW system. Emanti also disseminates knowledge to end users through user groups, focused sessions and training modalities. FutureWater is responsible for the models behind the forecasts, while HydroLogic specialises in providing decision support services for water managers through HydroNET, an open platform that translates massive amounts of data into usable information for water managers.

Bridging the distance

“Working over long distances can be challenging sometimes,” says Matthew. “With Eswatini being in Southern Africa, and our two partners located in the Netherlands, our collaboration efforts are a work in progress, requiring continuous effort and nurturing.” He explains that they ensure active and regular online engagement among the GLOW consortium. “At the beginning of our collaboration, we made a conscious decision to establish open dialogues. This means that we can always contact our partners with questions or ask for advice if we feel stuck. This intention created a ‘safe space’ to ask for help when necessary and, in a way, bridges the distance. I believe this is one of the key components that is making our collaboration a success!”

Stakeholder engagement

The partners not only create a ‘safe space’ to address questions within their consortium but also during their stakeholder engagement. “Our key stakeholders include various water authorities in Eswatini, Mozambique and South Africa,” says Matthew. “We want to know their opinions, and their pains and gains when using the system, because in the end, they are the ones that will have to use the system to support them in making water management decisions. We truly aim to develop the GLOW system for users, by users. We have done this through a co-creation process with the stakeholders in which they can indicate their needs and desires for the system.”

“We try to build a relationship with the stakeholders, because we’ve experienced that the more our stakeholders trust us, the more comfortable they feel with providing input and sharing their opinions. We also felt that the more we cooperate and work with them and their data, the more their interest has grown. This resulted in them welcoming the development of the system and indicating the importance of the GLOW system within their water resources planning.”

The power of collaboration

“One of our stakeholder sessions in Mozambique got delayed for several months due to the cyclone season. It required the stakeholders to be on the ground to deal with the damage caused. Although it was a big setback, it also showed the power of collaboration,” Matthew notes. He explains: “Our partners had other ongoing projects with our Mozambican stakeholders, which made it easy to stay in constant communication with them. Eventually, we even secured a new stakeholder meeting via another partnership in which our partners are involved, the Blue Deal Mozambique (Dutch Waterboard cooperation programme). The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Waterworks exchanged knowledge in a water-related event in Mozambique and allowed us to participate in one of the workshops to discuss how to start our interaction with the end users in Mozambique. It showed us how valuable it is to build relationships with local and international partners, and to have access to their network as well.”