The volume of groundwater in Africa is more than 100 times the annual renewable freshwater resource and 20 times the amount of freshwater stored in lakes, but its productive use in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains low. Global abstraction of groundwater increased tenfold between 1950 and 2000 and contributed significantly to growth in irrigation particularly in Asia. The global area equipped for irrigation has been estimated as 301 Mha of which 38% depends on groundwater, but for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) only 5.7% of the irrigated area is supported by groundwater. Just as in Asia, rapid expansion of groundwater irrigation may be about to occur in SSA. Although evidence from Asia suggests that groundwater irrigation promotes greater inter-personal, inter-gender, inter-class and spatial equity than is found under large scale canal irrigation, there is a significant risk that rapid development of groundwater resources in SSA may lead to inequitable resource use. There is a need for research to deliver the evidence and appropriate tools to support sustainable resource management and to assure access to groundwater resources by poor people. This research will address the following questions: 1: How and at what rate is groundwater being recharged? Deliverable: improved understanding of recharge processes at local and catchment scale; including consideration of influence of land use and water harvesting. 2: Can a tool be developed to help decision makers manage the resource? Deliverable: tools developed and tested at local (community) and catchment scales to assist decision makers in managing groundwater resources. 3: What are the implications of changes in land use? Deliverable: improved understanding of evidence base for influence of land use, water harvesting and green water flows on groundwater recharge. 4: What are the implications of climate change? Deliverable: tools for downscaling climate data and constructing scenarios developed and likely influence on recharge processes investigated. 5: How can policy and practice assure livelihood benefits for poor people? Deliverable: improved understanding of issues affecting access to and control of groundwater for productive use in irrigated agriculture. 6: What governance approaches are most likely to deliver equitable and sustainable use of groundwater? Deliverable: participatory evaluation of institutional change required at local community level and at national/catchment level to achieve equitable and sustainable use of groundwater in irrigated agriculture. Preliminary research will be delivered over a 1 year period by a multi-disciplinary research team from Newcastle University and the International Water Management Institute together with local partners in Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa. This will deliver a pilot study and build the research consortium. The pilot study in Ethiopia will address both technical and social/governance aspects of groundwater resource assessment and management from the regional to the local scale. Lake Tana basin has been selected as a suitable site. In parallel, additional exploratory research will be conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa. Key stakeholders will be invited to participate in consultations at in-country workshops aimed at understanding current state of knowledge around groundwater resources. Critical knowledge gaps likely to influence design of follow-up research will be identified and in-country collaborators will be commissioned to carry out short term studies. At the end of the 1-year catalyst grant project collaborating scientists representing partners from SSA together with UNEW and IWMI will meet for 3-day workshop in Addis Ababa in order to review lessons learned and agree design of the follow-on 4-year research project.

Secure access to water by the rural poor in Africa is central to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. With more than 500 million Africans dependent on groundwater and the potential for expanded use, the resilience of aquifers in the face of climate, population growth, and land-use change is key to this. Evidence suggests however, that during extended periods of low rainfall, groundwater supplies from low storage aquifers can fail. It is unclear, therefore, whether planned development of substantial numbers of groundwater supplies as a means to meet the expected large increase in demand, will be effective in all areas of sub-Saharan Africa. In the absence of long historical records of borehole levels, we are reliant on process understanding and modelling to infer the stability of groundwater supplies. In partnership with national and local government, NGOs and researchers, the BRAVE project will incorporate new understanding of climate variability and observational capacity and its water resource impacts into the planning and operation of groundwater supplies in the Volta River Basin. As a result of improved understanding of how water moves through catchments representative of the Volta River Basin, combined with output from state-of-the-art climate, land surface and groundwater models, new scientific knowledge will allow appropriate tools to be developed for planning at a range of scales: basin-scale long-term regional planning of aquifer-based water supplies for domestic and productive uses; local-scale long-term and seasonal community management of groundwater supplies; and provision of information that allows timely emergency planning in the light developing drought conditions. New observational capacity and assessments of user vulnerability and an understanding of governance frameworks linking local communities to national government, along with this new scientific knowledge, will be translated into forms that allow participatory decision-making to be made. Bringing together communities, practitioners and policy-makers, the application of the planning tools will be piloted in a series of case studies within eight communities in Ghana and Burkina Faso. A set of meaningful groundwater management tools will be developed with these communities that specifically address the information they want and need, and which are embedded within the existing local, district, national and regional governance structures. The use of the system in the pilot communities will provide insights into the extent such an approach can support sustainable decision making and equitable uptake. Furthermore, after consultation with our partners, we will also develop a methodology to produce seasonal groundwater status reports which will be linked into the newly operational Rainwatch-AfClix Drought Early Warning System in Burkina Faso and Ghana. BRAVE will contribute to building the resilience of poor communities to climate variability and environmental change in the Volta River Basin. The project outputs will be of direct relevance to government departments responsible for water supply development, as well as humanitarian and development organisations. Actively working together from the project inception will encourage ownership, culminating in the co-design and implementation of the planning tools. This will deliver a strategic shift in future national disaster risk reduction, adaptation and resilience related policies to support increased water security for the poorest people in Ghana and Burkina Faso with lessons around resilience building for the wider Sahel region.