Capacity Building for IWRM in South Africa

Project number: 93910046

Project summary

The main objective of this capacity building project is to enhance the teaching and research capacities of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the University of the Western Cape in the area of Integrated Water Resource Management that focuses on equitable, efficient, effective and sustainable management of water resources in South Africa. This overall objective responds to the urgent need in South Africa for institutional, managerial and technical capacity to sustainable manage water resources at all levels, but especially at the local level, with an explicit focus on equity in terms of gender, class and race. This project, through a variety of activities, will help to increase the number of qualified IWRM staff working for the two universities by:
1) Providing opportunities for 8 staff members to obtain their Masters Degree and 4 staff members to obtain their Doctoral Degree.
2) Jointly developing a state-of-the-art IWRM curriculum consisting of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses that will be offered to water sector professionals and a one year (joint) post-graduate diploma in IWRM at level 8 of the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF).
3) Establishing and strengthening 3 Research Units located in the Centre for Water and Sanitation Research at CPUT: the Environment, Water and Sustainability Research Unit (EWaSRU), the Water Risk Management Unit (WaRM) in the Community Water Supply and Sanitation Unit (CWSSU) and the Water Reuse Cycle Technology Unit (WaRCTU); and strengthening the Institute of Water Studies and the Department of Earth Sciences at UWC; and
4) Improving research and teaching facilities by establishing a GIS lab at UWC, instrumentating two catchments and establishing a water research lab at CPUT and housed in 2 Research Centres.

The project aims to increase the number of qualified and reflexive IWRM professionals that can meet the challenges of the water sector of South Africa. In doing so, the project explicitly seeks to address existing inequalities in the water sector, by increasing the number of women professionals (both staff and students) as well as increasing the share of historically disadvantaged groups in both student and staff population.