THE WHITE VOLTA SUB-BASIN - Sustainable Irrigation Development in the White Volta Sub-Basin - page 30

The key strategy at the national level is to secure good relationships among
all stakeholders and to work in a participatory manner, involving all local
communities at the basin level (Opoku-Ankomah et al., 2006).
This institutional structure for water resources management in Ghana tries
to bring on board all stakeholders in the water sector. However the
organizational structure looks complex for effective implementation of the
National Water Policy at the National, basin and sub-basin level. Presently,
effective monitoring of water related activities is lacking at all levels,
implementation of water-use regulations is also lacking as well as effective co-
ordination of water-related activities.
Political Administration: The public administration of Ghana consists of
ministries, departments and agencies. Public administration in Ghana is
decentralized and consists of regions which are governed by regional
coordinating councils and the districts which are governed by district,
municipal or metropolitan assemblies, depending on their size. The sub-
districts are made up of urban, zonal, town or area councils. The unit
committee is the lowest level of governance. The decentralization process in
Ghana devolved development planning and decision-making to the
Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies through the Local
Government Act 462 (Birner et al., 2005).
River Basin level Management and Decentralization: The most appropriate
level of water management is at the level where all affected parties are
represented. The WRC of Ghana has been mandated to facilitate capacity
building and awareness raising initiatives at decentralised Integrated Water
Resources Management (IWRM) levels. Since its establishment the WRC has
been exploring ways to use, in the most appropriate manner, the
decentralized government structure, specifically the Regional Coordinating
Committees and District Assemblies. WRC is implementing IWRM in the
White Volta sub-basin called the White Volta Pilot Project (WVPP) by
facilitating an iterative process to evolve a collaborative decentralized
institutional framework. The specific objectives of the WVPP are (Rodgers
et al., 2007):
 To identify and motivate stakeholders for collaboration and
participation in IWRM;
 To establish the institutional framework for IWRM;
 To develop a Water Action Plan; and
 To monitor and evaluate the IWRM process, with a view toward
wider application of the lessons learned in the White Volta setting.