WaSaf (Monitoring and protection of surface water sources in Africa) is an international project coordinated by INRAE, focusing on the monitoring and protection of continental surface water systems used to produce drinking water in three African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Uganda. Bringing together a consortium of African and French research teams working in the humanities and environmental sciences, it is based on the close involvement of all the players in the water sector, from natural resources to distributed water, and is funded by the French Global Environment Facility (FGEF) for a period of five years.

The objectives of the programme, launched on 8 February 2016 in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), are as follows:

• to set up long-term monitoring of surface aquatic ecosystems, which requires the choice of tools and approaches adapted to local contexts, the training of staff in the use of these tools and the definition of decision trees to guide monitoring stakeholders in the actions to be taken in crisis situations (e.g. during cyanobacteria blooms). In addition, a pilot study of participatory monitoring of cyanobacteria blooms was carried out on the Aghien lagoon (Côte d’Ivoire);
• assessing: (i) the current quality of the ecosystems targeted in this study by analysing existing data and acquiring additional data, and (ii) their possible future development by analysing the pressures exerted on them and their catchment areas, and by experiments carried out in mesocosms in these ecosystems;
• preparing and/or supporting the institutions concerned in setting up observatories for aquatic environments, particularly in defining the tasks and operation of these observatories and in creating databases to centralise all the data collected;
• analysis of the perception of the ecological and health status of ecosystems by local populations and identification of the uses made of these ecosystems and their catchment areas, the conflicts generated by the multiplicity of these uses, and their consequences for water quality;
• carrying out a comparative analysis of the organisation of water governance in the three countries targeted by this programme in order to compare the strengths and weaknesses of each system of governance and the consequences for ecosystem management;
• raising awareness and mobilising all those whose activities exert pressures that have an impact on these ecosystems, and creating platforms for dialogue bringing together users, managers, institutional representatives and scientists to prepare measures to protect and/or restore ecosystems.

This five-year project (2016-2021) is financed by the French Global Environment Facility (FGEF) and includes co-financing from AFD and several French research and higher education institutes (CNRS, INRAE, IRD, MNHN, Paris VI and Paris VII Universities) through the involvement of their staff.