IGAD Facilitates Knowledge Sharing for Better Resilience Building to Drought Disasters

Sept. 2, 2019 (NAIROBI, Kenya): The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) this morning inaugurated its Second Annual Resilience Share Fair under the regional organization’s Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI) in Nairobi.

This event whose theme is ‘Consolidating the Path to Resilience and Sustainability’ is the second of its kind. It is preceding the 10^th IDDRSI Platform Steering Committee Meeting and the 6^th IDDRSI General Assembly to be held on Sept. 4-5 and Sept. 6 respectively at the same venue.

The IDDRSI Forum and Share Fair is a two-day programme, featuring Keynote Presentations, Panel Discussions, Workshops, Break-out Sessions, Knowledge Cafés, Poster Presentations and Exhibitions. It has attracted more than 200 participants from the IGAD region, including national experts, government officials, research scientists, resilience practitioners, specialists, aid workers and regional and international staff involved in the implementation of IDDRSI and related thematic areas.

The Share Fair is hosting around nine organizations, programmes and projects active in the areas of building communities resilience to drought disasters, natural resources management, market access, pastoral disaster risk management, among others.

According to the IDDRSI Platform Coordinator at the IGAD Secretariat, Dr. John Kabayo, the Share Fair ‘is a regional learning event on best practices for effective coordination of IDDRSI’. ‘It promotes knowledge management for informed decision making and investment’, he said.

‘The Share Fair is a framework of active discussion that provides a highly participatory engagement in free exchange of ideas and sharing of information, which enables participants from different areas to interact with and learn from on-going examples of the efforts aimed at building the resilience of the communities in the IGAD region’, Dr. Kabayo added.

The Cross Border Advisor at the German Development Agency GIZ-Djibouti, Dr. Bedru Muzein, underlined that drought resilience had been ‘one of the most important engagements of IGAD in the past six to seven years’. He also registered IGAD success ‘in implementing the IGAD Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI)’ while recalling the support provided by the German government.

The Director of Technical Services at the National Drought Management Authority of Kenya, Mr. Sunya Orre, welcomed the participants and officially opened the Second Annual IGAD Resilience Share Fair.

The take home messages and key recommendations arising from the discussions during the different sessions of the two-day programme will be submitted to the meeting of the IDDRSI Platform Steering Committee for dissemination as resilience good practices and lessons learnt.

The Share Fair is supported by the German Development Agency GIZ.