The main challenge for developing and developed countries is to enhance the speed of knowledge flow from the places where knowledge is available and generated (researchers – “scan globally”) to the places where (new) knowledge will be applied (users – “act locally”). In most developing countries the main parts of the knowledge chain are weakly developed: hardly any research tradition and culture, low level of co-operation among researchers and water sector professionals, weak water curricula at higher education level and seldom or none training opportunities in the region for mid-career professionals, and absence or low capacity of the private sector institutions and NGOs. It all can be summarized as a structural lack of capacity in the water sector.

At present the community of river engineering professionals from the ten Nile basin countries are involved in addressing applied research topics/problems through the regional research clusters organized around 13 topics of high priority interest for the integrated management of the Nile basin water resources. These topics were identified during a participatory process of setting the regional priorities during the Cairo Workshop in 2002  (click here for research reports)

The Research activities of the NBCBN focused so far on building up applied research & development apacity in the specific field of river and hydraulic engineering. The next stage in development of the network will be characterized by more integration among the researchers involved in the 13 research groups tuned to solving relevant practical problems with direct tangible outputs. The scope of the project was as of now limited to river processes and hydraulic engineering, including: river morphology, GIS, hydropower, hydrographic surveys, monitoring, forecasting and modeling of river flows, engineering works like river regulating works, navigation works, environmental aspects of river engineering, etc.

The logic next step will be to stimulate the network communities to become also involved in broader cross-cutting issues like Management of Water Scarcity, Impact of Climate Change and Climate Variability on the water system, Extreme Events, etc. These issues require a multi-disciplinary approach and multi-stakeholder participation in water management and will also increase the need to involve other domain fields of within the IWRM domain area, like Hydrology, Water Supply and Sanitation, Irrigation and Drainage, but even more other water related disciplines like meteorology, ecology, sociology, political sciences, communication, etc.

This implies that other Communities of Practices CoP’s will be formed with the proposed Knowledge Network using the NBCBN network as a development model. This will allow and stimulate the involvement of those various experts in multidisciplinary teams to solve societal problems in the Nile Basin. Multidisciplinary problem fields that have already been identified during participation to several workshops, conferences and discussions with water professionals from the Nile region and considered as of major interest for Africa are:

1. Management of Water Scarcity
2. Management of Extreme Events (Floods and Droughts)
3. The Impact of the Climate Change and Climate Variability on the Nile water resources system, with application in:
   
   A : Impact on water supply systems
   B : Impact on economical development