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Alumni Award winner lunch seminar: Water resources management in a rapidly changing environment

Florence Adongo

The winner of the 2024 IHE Delft Alumni Award, Dr. Florence Grace Adongo will share insights from her field and career in a livestreamed seminar.

Florence Grace Adongo, Executive Director of the Nile Basin Initiative, Uganda, will share highlights from over 37 years of experience in various capacities of public service in Uganda’s Water Sector.

Dr Adongo will briefly give a historical snapshot of the birth and journey of Water Resources Management (WRM) in Uganda - following the Rio Earth Summit 1992 on Environment and Development. Uganda was the first country in the World to prepare a Water Action Plan in 1993, adopting the principles of integrated water resources management. This Water Action Plan provided a guide to Government on sustainable water resources development and management. This achievement included a comprehensive document informing a subsequent enabling environment (the legal and institutional frameworks) as well as planning and prioritization mechanisms. The Water Action Plan attracted several studies, promoted multi-sectoral projects and programmes in response to institutional strengthening and service delivery. These reformative actions did not come without challenges.  

Water resource management reforms

To step up WRM, Government of Uganda undertook a WRM reform study from 2003 to 2005 with the objective of establishing an effective framework for Water Resources Management in Uganda to ensure that water resources are managed in an integrated and sustainable manner. The reform study led to several key recommendations that guided subsequent WRM actions.

Adongo will share the progress made in the implementation of these reforms, which repositioned WRM in Uganda, and the outcomes achieved, giving a few sample cases and challenges. The presentation will highlight her role in spearheading positive changes in IWRM at a national level in Uganda and her contributions to transboundary water cooperation within the Nile Basin. 

 

About the speaker

Adongo graduated from IHE Delft in 1997 with an MSc in Water and Environmental Resources Management (WERM). She is an accomplished professional in Water and Environmental Resources Management, with over 37 years of distinguished public service. As the Executive Director of the Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat (NileSEC), she has pioneered women’s participation in the field. NileSEC is an intergovernmental partnership of ten Nile Basin countries: Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

In October 2023, Adongo assumed her two-year tenure with “a vision to sustain a vibrant platform where all Basin countries can come together to share knowledge and experience, and engage in dialogue, fostering common solutions to shared challenges.” Under her leadership, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is undergoing a major transition, moving toward the establishment of the Nile River Basin Commission - a legal institution for Nile cooperation formalized in October 2024.