The Southern African Development Community (SADC), through her Water Division in the Directorate of Infrastructure and Services, provides a platform for its member states to address issues and challenges in transboundary water management. Given that SADC aims for regional integration and socio-economic development, it becomes obvious that these tasks are easier to cope with effective and efficient support from ‘International Cooperating Partners’ (ICPs). Guided by the 2005 ‘Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness’, the SADC Consultative Conference in 2006 adopted the so-called ‘Windhoek Declaration’. This guides cooperation in all economic sectors between SADC and her ICPs.

It is in this context that the SADC Water Division, through the SADC thematic water group, being the Water Strategy Reference Group (WSRG), commissioned a survey of ICP support activities and financial flows in the SADC water sector. The survey was carried out in May and June 2008 by Germany as sector lead ICP through her implementing agency GIZ. The results of this survey were documented in October 2008 in the form of a technical and an executive summary report respectively. The reports were agreed by the WSRG to be updated biannually, one month ahead of the equally biannual WSRG meetings. This current report is the fifth update and includes an overview of the main programmes and projects to date (20th April 2011) of 20 bi-lateral and multi-lateral ICPs that cooperate in the SADC water sector and focus on transboundary (regional) water activities. Also included in the overview are those national programmes and projects that have a direct link to transboundary river basins. Key findings of the survey are presented in the separate executive summary report.

It should be noted that these reports are part of an ongoing inventory of ICP support to the SADC water sector as it is anticipated that new ICP support efforts with a different thematic and geographic focus will follow. It is envisaged that the reports will help to identify the needs and gaps of collaboration at shared river basin level.