Women's Leadership: A new winning equation in the Lake Chad Basin and the Mano and Mono River Basins

  BRIDGE     Western and Central Africa  

Women's Leadership: A new winning equation in the Lake Chad Basin and the Mano and Mono River Basins

In the Lake Chad Basin, the Mono River Basin and the Mano River Basin, water is the source of livelihood, employment, and social connection. At dawn, women rise with the river; some draw water for their homes, others irrigate small vegetable gardens, wash, process, or smoke fish from its waters before selling it in the markets of Kousseri (Cameroon), N'Djamena (Chad), or Kindia (Guinea). They are the silent guardians of the most precious resource, the one that feeds families, meets basic needs, and sustains the economic life of their communities. While they know every river, every season, every fluctuation in water levels, their voices are often absent from the governance structures of these resources. Their experience, though rooted in the realities on the ground, does not truly translate into political or institutional influence in water resource management. It is in this context that the IUCN, through the Building River Dialogue and Governance (BRIDGE) project, initiated a series of capacity-building sessions for women to better equip them to participate in water resource governance.