The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) has announced a pledge of US$ 7million by development partners to aid in the preparation of new power and natural resource management programmes.

Audace Ndayizeye, the NBI Executive Director, explained at a stake-holder’s workshop in Kigali yesterday that this will help to achieve socio-economic development and benefits to all the Basin countries.

He said it was part of a ten-year investment programme to promote investments in power development, water resource management, and agricultural development was made public.

The programme that started in January 2001ends in June 2010 and will contribute to the eradication of poverty, promote economic growth and reverse environmental degradation in the Nile Equatorial Lakes (NEL) region.

"Seven projects identified under the initial track of cooperative projects had been prepared and some have reached implementation stage,” Ndayizeye said.

"The scaling up agenda targets downstream investments from the first track of the cooperative projects and promoting of new Nile projects,” he added.

Ndayizeye stressed that given the complex and rapidly emerging need for cooperative management of the Nile basin water resources, it is highly desirable to create a mechanism that aims to achieve unity of purpose and action across the Nile Basin.

The Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Programme (NELSAP) has laid a strategy to operationalize the master plan for medium and long-term investment for power generation as the country coordinator, Antoine Sendama explains.

"It will be done through preparation of key pre-feasibility and feasibility studies and assessment of the hydropower potential,” he said.

Sendama pointed out that to ensure regional coordination and management of the projects, resource mobilization for the implementation of the above plan was going on. 

The chairperson of the Technical Advisory Committee of NEL, Idi Buhanga, promised the provision of strategic guidance, monitoring and supervision to ensure that programme objectives are achieved within the time and budget allocations.

"We will assist the Council of Ministers in identifying the highest priority issues and technical strategies and the ways in which they can be addressed through development projects,” Buhanga who is also Burundi’s National Director of Water and Energy said.

Natural resources minister, Hon Stanislas Kamanzi pledged government’s full support towards development of NBI projects.

"The government is fully committed to the fight against poverty and promotion of sustainable economic growth,” Kamanzi said.

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