Groundwater without borders

Beneath the fields and villages of the Mono Basin - a narrow river corridor shared between Benin and Togo - lies a resource that is increasingly critical to the region’s future: groundwater. Yet for all its importance, it has remained stubbornly invisible. Monitoring stations sit broken or abandoned. Data collected in Benin rarely reaches Togo, and vice versa. Decisions about water allocation, drought response, and infrastructure investment are made without a common picture of what lies underground.

Aiming to address this problem is the Global Environment Facility (GEF)-funded Groundwater for aDvancing Resilience in Africa (G4DR) project. Crucially, G4DR is not acting in isolation, but rather drawing on vital lessons from other shared river basins through the IW:LEARN Twinning Program.

In May 2026, technical experts from the Mono Basin Authority (MBA) came together with their peers from three of West Africa’s most experienced river basin organizations (RBOs)—Niger Basin Authority (NBA), Volta Basin Authority (VBA), Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC)—for a two-day technical meeting in Cotonou, Benin.

The first part of the interactive event focused on the physical infrastructure of groundwater monitoring. Observation boreholes allow hydrogeologists to track water table levels over time. In the Mono Basin, many of these stations have fallen into disrepair; others have never been equipped with the automatic data loggers needed to make continuous monitoring possible.

Presentations mapped out what each country currently monitors, at what frequency, using what parameters, and where that data is stored. The comparison revealed both encouraging common ground and significant gaps - precisely the kind of honest baseline needed before any shared platform can be built.

With the context in the Mono Basin laid out, the floor was handed to the twinned organizations (VBA, NBA, and LCBC), who detailed their experiences with data sharing. This included the platforms they have built, the agreements they have negotiated, the technical setups they maintain, and the lessons they have learned about what makes inter-state data cooperation work.

After the presentations, participants broke into two working groups. One group drafted the outlines of a data-sharing protocol for the Mono Basin, drawing on the most transferable elements of what NBA, VBA, and LCBC had shared. The second focused on platform design: the technology options, hosting arrangements, data standards, and management responsibilities that a Mono Basin data sharing system would require.

The results fed directly into the day’s closing session, where participants agreed on a set of priority actions, an outline roadmap and the importance of a binding protocol.

“If we don’t reach agreement and if the member countries are not able to share data with one another, that constitutes a real problem,”

said Razaki Sanoussi, Deputy Executive Director, MBA.

“The challenge we face today is to ensure that there exists a protocol accepted by all—a binding protocol that will allow each country, freely and in accordance with this protocol, to share its data openly,”

he added.

There were also valuable reflections and insights that the more established basins took away from the event.

For LCBC, the workshop prompted a reframing of one of the region’s most intractable environmental crises: the historical shrinking of the Lake Chad. For years, one of the leading proposed solutions has been a large-scale surface water transfer from the Congo Basin. The discussions shifted this perspective by highlighting the potential role of groundwater as a part of future interventions.

Meanwhile, one of G4DR’s most distinctive innovations, the Youth Ambassador model, drew immediate interest from the visiting RBO representatives. Here young people are recruited, trained, and deployed as frontline monitors and communicators of groundwater issues in their communities. The approach connects field science to social change, ensuring that the people most affected by groundwater decline have a voice in how it is managed.

The outcomes of the meeting - agreed rehabilitation plans, a community engagement framework, working group outputs on protocol and platform design - are concrete. But perhaps equally important is what was less tangible: the relationships formed, the trust built, and the recognition among all participants that the challenges of groundwater management in West Africa are shared challenges, best addressed together.

For Razaki Sanoussi, Deputy Executive Director, MBA, the keywords were “sharing, participation, collaboration, and cooperation”.

“We cannot carry out the work of managing our resources, which are in perpetual degradation, without the involvement of all stakeholders,”

he said.

As G4DR moves toward its next phase of implementation - monitoring network rehabilitation, data platform development, and the long process of building the political will for a binding data sharing agreement - the foundation laid in Cotonou will matter. Not just because of what was decided, but because of who was in the room, and what they were willing to share.

Words by Dr Moctar Dembélé, Researcher (Spatial Hydrology), IWMI; Dr Girma Yimer Ebrahim, Researcher in Hydrogeology and Water Resources, IWMI; Dr Jonathan Lautze, Research Group Leader (Integrated Basin and Aquifer Management), IWMI.

The Groundwater for aDvancing Resilience in Africa (G4DR) project is a four-year (2024–2028) transboundary initiative enhancing regional water security through sustainable groundwater development. Operating across Pan-African, national, and local scales, it features three pilot sites: the Mono River Basin (Benin/Togo), the Shire Aquifer System (Malawi/Mozambique), and the Upper Nile Water Management Zone (Uganda). Its objective is to advance climate resilience, food security, and community wellbeing by coordinating the management and protection of Africa's largest underutilized water resource.

G4DR safeguards the livelihoods of rural and borderland communities by bridging high-level policy with on-the-ground realities. By co-designing transboundary monitoring networks, creating data-driven risk frameworks, and empowering women and youth, the project ensures shared aquifers are equitably managed and integrated into climate adaptation strategies.

Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), G4DR is implemented by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and executed by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Key partners include the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and the SADC Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI).

For more information, please contact Chief Technical Advisor Jonathan Lautze (j.lautze@cgiar.org)