2024 reflections: Water and Development Partnership Programme
The year 2024 has been an inspiring, yet challenging year for our Water and Development Partnership Programme. As it comes to an end, we reflect on the partnerships, experiences and achievements that shaped our efforts and impact over the past months.
Highlights of the year
This year has given us much to celebrate. Many of our partners and projects in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, the Sahel and other regions have made meaningful progress addressing some of the most complex water challenges affecting their regions. Our programme has been privileged to support these collaborative efforts, and in 2024 we expanded this support by awarding funding to 13 new projects.
The programme is supporting more than 45 interdisciplinary projects that involve over 300 organisations working in the water sector around the world. Most of these projects are led by partner organisations external to IHE Delft, and over half are led by women—in line with our shared vision of a more inclusive and sustainable water world.
This year, we also organised 17 joint learning seminars, including 8 thematic sessions, where project teams shared experiences and key insights from their projects. This nurtured critical reflections and stimulated knowledge exchange on a range of key topics.
Our second annual symposium, themed ‘Reimagining water: Critically reflecting on knowledge production’, brought together more than 320 participants—water practitioners, researchers, policy advisors and communities. The event spurred critical discussions on hierarchies in scientific knowledge production and concluded with a call to recognise and embrace the diverse ways of knowing and dealing with water.
We added journal publications, training, datasets and other contextualised resources from projects to our open-access online programme repository. The repository comprises more than 400 pieces of content, including 150 created by projects supported by Phase 3 of the programme.
We also took part in key events such as the Cairo Water Week and Africa Water Week, held in parallel in Cairo, Egypt. We were present in IHE Delft’s booth and hosted a session on Innovative Approaches towards Water Resource Challenges in Agriculture led by two of our projects, SafeAgroMENA and GWS-SENCE.
Global situation
While we rejoice about this progress, we are also troubled by the current political climate and the global situation. In this time of growing polarisation, we are deeply concerned about the struggles faced by those living and working in places where violent conflicts and oppression are ongoing, including our partners in Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere.
We hold those affected and their families close in our heart. We support our project teams and partners who work under difficult circumstances, advocating for change in the water sector and their societies.
In these turbulent times, we stand in solidarity with and draw strength from the resilience of our programme community. We will continue to create opportunities for joint learning and collaborative action in pursuit of water justice and a future that is peaceful, socially just and ecologically sustainable.
What’s to come in 2025
Together with our partners, we have planned several activities for 2025, including:
- A new Women in Water Community to support women in leadership roles within our programme.
- An open online seminar reflecting on water infrastructure in times of war.
- A newsletter to enhance communication and knowledge sharing.
- A call for proposals to support regional collaborations in strengthening master’s and post-graduate education in water-related fields.
- As part of IHE Delft’s International Symposium on Knowledge and Capacity for the Water Sector, to be held in July, we will organise sessions on inclusive learning, pluralising knowledge, challenging hierarchies and the impact of capacity development.
- Our third annual programme symposium to critically discuss and reflect on important water-related issues.
"May the coming year bring renewed hope, strengthened partnerships and meaningful progress for all."