About Us

About Us
The Nile Basin Discourse (NBD) was re-launched at the end of 2005 with the assistance of UK 's Department for International Development (DFID). A new NBD Discourse Desk in Entebbe was opened in March 2006 and the Desk staff are working on a new programme of activities that seek to achieve critical impact on the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). Under its programme, the NBD seeks to complete four milestones. In its first milestone, it aspires to re-establish a physical presence in the basin through the offices of the Desk as well as the National Discourse Forums (NDFs) in all countries with new staff working to develop comprehensive workplans. In its second milestone, the NBD is seeking to improve the knowledge environment available to civil society on Nile issues, through of Nile resource centers, developing a central database and raising awareness among communities and civil society organizations in the basin on the NBI, development projects and the need for civil society participation. Specific activities in each country will raise issues of development facing Nile communities including water scarcity, degradation and poverty as part of national agendas for discussion and debate. An important component of the current NBD programme is research which constitutes the third milestone. This is about developing capacity to generate new knowledge and use that knowledge more effectively to influence policy and practice under the NBI. Pro-poor audits of NBI projects, action research on benefit-sharing, studies on multi-stakeholder dialogue constitute important under-takings during this phase. All research outputs will be distributed widely for comment and feedback. The last milestone deals with civil society capacity building. This aims at enhancing the capacity of civil society organizations and community based organizations to raise their own concerns and address critical development challenges facing them. A key element of this milestone is enhancing the ability of NDFs to support local communities. We believe that by involving civil society in the development projects of the NBI, we can enhance their positive impact, help to mitigate negative impacts and inch towards a situation in which poverty reduction becomes a reality.