A boat conveys an environmental message along the Nile River in Jinja, Uganda, known as East Africa’s adventure capital. (The Science Diplomat)

When a five-year international water quality project formally ends Oct. 31, Uganda will retain a national assessment, scientific models, trained specialists and new tools for monitoring the rivers and lakes on which its people and economy depend.

The Sustainable Water Quality Management Supporting Uganda’s Development Ambitions project, known as SWAQ-Uganda, brought together Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and BOKU University in Vienna.

Funded by the Austrian Development Agency and contributions from the three partner organizations, the €1.7 million initiative sought to address a fundamental obstacle to effective water management: the lack of reliable information about water quality. The project has produced a nationwide picture of river water quality.

“We can say that around 60% of the rivers are in a good state according to an assessment under the SDG framework,” said Mathew Herrnegger, a senior scientist and deputy head of the Institute of Hydrology and Water Management at BOKU. “As you know, around Kampala or cities, the river water quality is worse.”

IIASA led the project, applying water models designed to examine how climate change, land use, socioeconomic development and policy choices affect water quality and availability. BOKU and the Ugandan ministry’s Directorate of Water Resources Management were partners.

Field monitoring expanded the data available to IIASA and BOKU researchers, allowing them to set up and calibrate IIASA’s Community Water Model, known as CWatM, at the national level and the SWAT model for the Mpanga catchment.

Using new information about point and diffuse sources of pollution, they also developed and tested CWatM modules examining erosion, sediment flows and phosphorus — refining the models in a country where water quality data have been limited.

The project trained Ugandan specialists in data management, biological assessment and hydrological and water-quality modeling using R, RStudio and Python. It also strengthened relationships among IIASA, BOKU and Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment while giving researchers a better understanding of local data and water management needs.

Building on IIASA’s relationship of more than a decade with the Austrian Development Agency, the project expanded exchanges with Ugandan universities, government research institutions and the Nile Basin Initiative. Support for master’s and doctoral students, along with plans for further training, workshops and joint fieldwork, could lead to continued collaboration and co-authored research.

Those research exchanges, training programs and institutional relationships form the project’s science diplomacy dimension. For Uganda’s water managers, the partnership also produced practical tools to track pollution, assess river health and evaluate emerging risks associated with climate change, urbanization and agricultural expansion.

“The project led to the development of practical tools that strengthen the capacity of Uganda’s water experts within the ministry,” said Katja Kerschbaumer, head of the Austrian Development Agency’s development cooperation office in Uganda.

“These tools help them understand how pollution moves through rivers and lakes and how emerging threats such as climate change, urbanization and agricultural expansion can be better managed to ensure that Uganda’s water resources remain clean,” she said.

Officials and researchers presented the findings at an end-of-project national workshop hosted by Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment in Luzira, Kampala, in September.

Gilbert Kimanzi, Uganda’s commissioner for multipurpose and bulk water development, said the Mpanga work showed what restoration could accomplish. “Its findings have demonstrated the benefits of catchment restoration for the quantity and quality of water resources and for aquatic biodiversity in the Mpanga catchment,” he said.

The national and catchment-level field campaigns also produced a mapping tool, a water-quality data dashboard, methods for assessing and classifying rivers and a repository for water-quality data.

At the September workshop, Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, Uganda’s minister for water and environment, emphasized that the need for clean water would outlast the project. “Your project should not close now,” he said, UBC Television Uganda reported.

The ministry is seeking support from the Austrian Development Agency for a successor program that could sustain the monitoring system and expand lessons from the Mpanga catchment to watersheds across Uganda.

Researchers warned that pollution is worsening around Kampala and other urban centers, making continued monitoring increasingly important as cities grow and pressures from agriculture and climate change increase.

The Science Diplomat