Success and Challanges

LAND USE

The Rufiji River Basin has a number of land uses.  The dominating land use is agriculture (both rain-fed and irrigated agriculture).  Other types include urban centres and other human settlements, Livestock rearing, Hydropower installations, National Parks (3 in number), several game reserves, forest reserves, fishing (in ponds and natural water bodies) and some mining.

WATER USE

The water uses in the Rufiji Basin are:

• Domestic Water Supply
• Irrigation – mainly the Great Ruaha followed by the Kilombero Sub-basins
• Hydropower in the Great Ruaha and Kilombero (Ruhudji and Kihansi)
• Fishing in all the river
• Livestock
• Industry
• Mining
• Transport – (ferries, boats mainly in the Great Ruaha, Kilombero and the lower parts of the Rufiji River).
• Environmental flows

Most uses are in the Great Ruaha River.

Challanges

• The sources of funding the running of our office activities are meagre (since we only basically depend on water user fees).
• Staffing is still inadequate.
• The water user conflicts are becoming a common constraint now.  There are several conflicts such as those arising between pastoralists and irrigators, hydropower generation and irrigation etc.

The Management of the catchment virtues is vital.  This however entails availability of resources to enable proper management of the water resources.  Public awareness of water resources management issues remains the major activity in this aspect.

The experiences we have in the basin shows that early and precautionary measures are required to be taken in order to properly handle conflicts and equitably allocate the water resources to competing water uses.