Pathways for building capacity and ensuring effective transboundary water resources management in Africa: Revisiting the key issues, opportunities and challenges

• Most TRBOs in Africa are functionally weak. They need capacity-building.
• This paper articulates the main considerations for capacity building in TRBM.
• There is no global recipe or short-term silver-bullet for success in this context.
• Capacity is about skills of TRBO actors, incentives and effective institutions.
• There is need to analyze in-depth the main capacity challenges faced in each basin.

The performance of most organizations and institutions set up to facilitate transboundary water resources management in Africa remains unsatisfactory and new frameworks are required to address this performance gap. Using the Nile and Senegal River Basins as case studies, this paper applies qualitative research methods to explore the transboundary river basin management terrain in Africa with a view to identifying and articulating some of the major issues, challenges and opportunities faced in building the capacity of the main actors and institutions in the sector. The paper establishes that the creation of basin management institutions as the assumed panacea to challenges evident in this sector has not delivered the desired results. Some of the institutions established for this purpose in Africa have remained functionally weak and ineffective. Thus, demand for capacity-building interventions in this landscape remains high. The paper concludes that comprehensive capacity-building interventions should seek to improve the competencies and skills of key actors in implementing the broad range of activities constituting integrated water resources management in transboundary basins. In-depth analysis of the fundamental capacity constraints and challenges that key players face in relation to key drivers for cooperation is the absolutely necessary ingredient.