Ethiopia, the Netherlands sign €45mln grant agreement

Addis Ababa, December 19, 2023 (FBC) – The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands signed Grant Agreement to support Basin Management Support for Resilient Inclusive Growth and Harmonized Transformation for the national Integrated Water Resource Management Program (BRIGHT).

The total finance envelope of project is 45 million € (2.7 billion Birr) , the Ministry of Finance revealed today.

This grant, according to the Ministry, shall be used to improve Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in Abbay, Awash, Rift Valley, Omo-Gibe and Tekezie river basins. The project specifically aims to:

(i) To strengthen the technical, managerial, regulatory, infrastructural and logistical capacities of the MoWE and the selected Basin Administration Offices (BAOs) and concerned regional bureaus in IWRM,

(ii) To support designing and have in-place a well-functioning Basin Information System for IWRM and generate additional evidence to fill knowledge gaps in the selected river basins;

(iii) To support the revision/preparation of basin plans and facilitate their implementation by supporting priority and high impact IWRM projects in the target basins; and

(iv) To establish climate-smart IWRM learning sub-basins and watersheds in the target basins.

At impact level, BRIGHT aims to contribute to improvements of resilience and reduction of vulnerability of the population to drought and climate change in Ethiopia, the Ministry further disclosed.

The Agreement was signed by Mr. Ahmed Shide, Minister of Finance of Ethiopia and Henk Jan Bakker, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Ethiopia.