Top government officials from the East African Community (EAC) partner states have convened in Kisumu for the 23rd Ordinary Meeting of the Sectoral Council on Lake Victoria Basin (SECOM-LVB).
The five-day forum will the deliberate on the various projects that are being undertaken by the LVBC based on their mandates (May 12- 16).
According to the Deputy Executive Secretary to the Lake Victoria Basin Commission, Colleta Rohamia, the deliberations will focus on the strategies to make the commission move forward with it’s co-mandates.
Rohamia added that they will look at the matrix of the previous meetings; build better grounds, and implementing the projects that cuts across the member states.
” We also collect views from the partner states to draw clear policies and guidelines,” Rohamia said.
The high-level summit has brought together Cabinet Secretaries, Permanent Secretaries, and senior officials.
The technical experts are drawn from ministries responsible for Water, Environment, Natural Resources, Maritime Transport, and Communications across the region.
The schedule includes sessions for senior officials on May 12 and 13, Permanent/Principal Secretaries.
The Under-Secretaries session will be on May 14-15, which will ultimately conclude with a Ministerial session for Cabinet Secretaries on May 16th.
Delegates from all six EAC Partner States—the Republics of Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, and the United Republic of Tanzania—are in attendance.
SECOM-LVB serves as the governing body of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC), the EAC agency tasked with coordinating sustainable development initiatives in the Lake Victoria Basin.
Its mandate includes providing overarching policy direction and oversight.
This is stipulated in Article 35 of the Protocol for Sustainable Development of the Lake Victoria Basin and Section 8 of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission Act, 2022.
The Kisumu meeting will assess progress on decisions from the 22nd SECOM-LVB, review reports from the 11th Joint Regional Policy Steering Committee for LVBC Projects and Programmes.
It will further discuss finance, administration, and institutional matters.
