Sharing results and discussing findings on water & erosion in the Sio-Malaba-Malakisi river basin

26. February 2020
People sitting around a table and discussing
The APPEAR project CapNex convened a stakeholder/dissemination workshop in Bungoma County, Kenya on 6th of February 2020.

The meeting was aimed at sharing preliminary results obtained from research work conducted in the Sio-Malaba-Malakisi river basin and subsequently, gathering feedback from the invited stakeholders in order to verify and validate the results.

The meeting was hosted by the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) and facilitated together with BOKU Vienna, Austria.

Stakeholders for the workshop came from various organizations working within the basin including government ministries, civil society organizations, representatives from academia, county government officials and representatives from line ministries and community-based organizations from both Kenya and Uganda. The stakeholders were drawn from locations such as Tororo and Busia in Uganda, Kakamega, Bungoma, Kitale, Busia, Nambale and Bumala in Kenya.

The presentations mainly focused on case studies A and B as follows:

  • Case study A: Water use and allocation, water demand of crops, satellite precipitation products (hydrology, water quantity)
  • Case study B: Erosion (erosion models, nutrient flows, water quality)

Case study A was presented by Mr. Paul Omonge, who is a PhD student at the BOKU University together with Dr. Mathew Herrnegger, who is the supervisor and one of the CapNex project co-principal investigator. The presentations also included work by Hope Mwanake, who is also a PhD student at the BOKU University.

Case study B presentations were done by Mr. Stanley Chasia and Mr. Nathan Muli both PhD students at the Technical University of Kenya and supervised by Dr. Luke Olang, who is the co-principal investigator for the CapNex project in Kenya.

At the end of the meeting, the organizers and presenters from both TUK and BOKU sought the comments from the participants/stakeholders on key issues related to land use, water availability and water quality. Have a look at the full report to read a summary of the major findings of the stakeholder workshop.

Prior to the stakeholder workshop, on 3rd of February, a project team meeting was convened at Technical University of Kenya. In the framework of this meeting, preliminary results of the PhD research conducted in the framework of CapNex were presented, among others, to Deputy Vice-chancellor of academic and student affairs of TU-K, Prof. Paul Shiundu, and the Director of the graduate school. The stakeholder workshop in Bungoma and the meeting at TU-K aimed at sharing CapNex project details with university management and important stakeholders and added to the sustainability and visiblity of the project.