African Water Development Report 2006 - United Nations Economic ...

processes and situations or to an optimizationat a particular point in time. The dynamicoptimization in DP is done throughevaluation of a number of time steps.Appropriate Technology or EffectiveTechnologyEnsuring the knowledge base in Africa throughthe creation and dissemination of knowledge onwater resources development and managementcan be facilitated through technology transfer.Here technology boils down to know-how.The term appropriate technology sometimes hasmisleading connotations not only in Africancountries but also to those producing substitutivetechnologies at cheaper prices. It has thereforeassumed more socio-economic implicationsthan the actual problem-solving necessity thatthe technology must address, thus becomingmostly confused with affordability. Unlike inother fields, the object of study in hydrology andwater sciences is not created by society but existsaccording to its own laws of occurrence, undergoingcontinuous transformations due to theimpact of man in a changing environment. Theappropriateness of a technology has to be measuredand evaluated on the basis of how muchknowledge and benefits could accrue from itsapplication. In water resources, the concept offirst class and second class products must not existsince a water project not adequately designedand executed could procure more damages thanthe expected benefits.Most failures in water projects in Africa are notdue to improper technological application butto lack of knowledge and skills that must accompanythe selection and use of a given technology.The other problem, not secondary, is the problemof data collection, archiving and retrieval whichuntil just a few years ago was still done manually.Almost all African countries are now graduallyacquiring personal computers for data management,most often through bilateral aid andgrants. With the increasing awareness of theglobal nature of hydrological processes, graduallymoving from narrow catchment hydrology intoa global one, the choice of technologies shouldnot transfer the unequal socio-economic levelsof development onto the physical hydrologicalscale. For example, the general lack of climaticand hydrological data sets in African countries isimpeding research into climatic teleconnectionsand climate change studies at both the continentaland global scales.The effectiveness of technological use in waterresources assessment, development and managementmust be measured by the efficiency ofprediction of water availability and the generalreduction of the uncertainties inherent in thequantitative perception of the water cycle elements.An example can be cited of the generallow water use efficiency in irrigation systems andin water supply distribution networks in mostAfrican countries. In order to reduce the largecomponent of unaccounted-for-water in watersupply networks there is the need to infuse moderntechnologies for the effective control and realtime monitoring of pressures in the distributionpipes which could offset further capital investmentin water supply. One other issue of technologytransfer centres on the suitability of labourintensivetechnologies to the socio-economicsituations in African countries. Labour-intensivetechnologies require more time-consuming andcomplex management systems, whereas moderntechnologies simplify management practices andare more effective in solving the required waterproblem.The Problems of Knowledge Assimilationin AfricaExpected developments still elude Africancountries in spite of the substantial efforts putinto knowledge acquisition through educationand training and also the importation of foreigntechnology, most often at very high per capitaENSURING THE KNOWLEDGE BASE309