Project Start: Sustainable Water Quality Management in Uganda with HYDROPHIL on Board

Clean and safe water is a fundamental human right, yet millions of people worldwide still lack access to this vital resource. In Uganda, a significant step towards addressing this issue has been taken with the official launch of the Sustainable Water Quality Management (SWAQ) project. This initiative is a collaborative effort between the Austrian Development Agency, the Ugandan Ministry of Water and Environment, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU – Universität für Bodenkultur Wien).

Our HYDROPHIL experts, Mr Thomas Waclavicek and Dr Bastian Schnabel, will actively contribute to this important endeavour. HYDROPHIL’s mandate is to enhance the capacity of water quality monitoring and data management at the Department of Water Quality Monitoring in the Ministry of Water and Environment.

Bastian and Thomas were recently on-site for the official kick-off event in Kampala and at the in-country familiarisation mission, bringing back some interesting insights.

During the meetings with the Ministry staff and the other stakeholders, team leader Bastian presented the methodology for building an improved water quality monitoring network.

Afterwards, our experts went on a field trip, visiting the Mpanga catchment from Fort Portal to Mbarara, with scientists from BOKU and IIASA. The Mpanga River basin is the pilot catchment of the project. The team inspected several hydrological and water quality monitoring stations and took some measurements. Further, two water quality monitoring laboratories based in Fort Portal and Mbarara, which the Ministry has set up in its decentralised units, were inspected and assessed for their monitoring capacities.