Mogadishu 25 July 2018: On 30 and 31 July 2018, the Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) project will be holding a two day of information sharing workshop at Mogadishu FAO office in the AMISOM VIP Conference hall (MIA) in Somalia. The event's objective is to give SWALIM’s partners a chance to learn more about SWALIM’s award-winning work and the impact it has on Somalia.

Mogadishu, 8 May 2018.  At the closing of the international conference on charcoal in Mogadishu this week, the Government of Somalia and the United Nations have jointly called for stronger national and regional policies, and further investment in developing alternative sources of energy and alternative livelihoods in Somalia, to stop the illegal export of charcoal from the country.

Access to water is a basic human need, and achieving full coverage remains a challenge in many areas of Somalia. To address this, FAO SWALIM has supported the Somalia ministries and institutions

SWALIM has set up nine data centres in collaboration with Ministries in Somalia as part of its strategic approach in capacity building, it has continually concentrated on training staff from the data centres, ministries and other partners in Somalia. It is anticipated that with time, these institutions will be able to fully take over the work done by SWALIM with little external support.

Through a series of webinars the SWALIM project staff seeks to explain in detail the ICT innovations used and share the lessons learned with the members of the e-Agriculture Community of Practice and other interested participants. You can access the Webinar through this link: http://bit.ly/2r9Fyz2

During the implementation of the FAO-IGAD partnership, SWALIM mapped the Somali portion of a trans-boundary land cover.

FAO SWALIM has completed a hydrogeological assessment of Gedo Region, South Somalia. The study was done through remote sensing analysis of satellite images.

For only the second time, on 4 October, 2016, SWALIM held an Open Day event in the federal capital of Somalia. The event was well attended, with over thirty participants attending

SWALIM can now reliably report that the river bank breakage at Bayaxaaw has been closed, initially with sand bags and later by heavy machinery.

The final months of SWALIM Phase V saw the termination of the project leadership of Hussein Gadain, who took up a new posting as FAO Representative in Egypt after successfully serving for three years as Chief Technical Advisor of the land and water information management project (see SWALIM  Update, Issue 11).