The Tana-Beles basins have been selected as the first growth corridor of Ethiopia. The idea is to use the available water resources to develop and stimulate economic development. This study presents an inventory of the natural resources in the area, and the physical planning of future irrigation systems.

The NBI project Efficient Water Use for Agricultural Production (EWUAP) is the first step in bringing together stakeholders to develop a common shared vision on availability and use of water for agricultural production. The objective of this project was to make an inventory of the LSI schemes and their main problems and issues, such as best practices, misconceptions, opportunities, weaknesses and needs. The irrigation conditions were compared to global and/or regional best practices.

Spatial data derived from satellites is of great value for Decision Support Systems (DSS). The Water Resources Planning and Management (WRPM) project of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is currently developing a DSS. A remote sensing scoping study was conducted to learn more about the existence of satellite data archives covering land properties, land surface state variables, and land surface physical processes and the strong advances in remote sensing technologies over recent years.

Ground water systems are often not sustainable exploited and limited information is available for proper exploitation. This project aims at strenghtening the aquifer management in Ethiopia by building an innovative tool (GroundBuck) that allows stakeholders to interactively study the impact of ground water management actions using satellite based information on the hydrology of the ground water system.

The Baro-Akobo basin covers both Sudan and Ethiopia, with the source of the rivers laying in Ethiopia and merging in the Sobat river in Sudan. Aim of this study was to quantify the impact of disconnecting the Machar Marshes in Sudan from the Sobat river. Using SEBAL the impact on stream flow is investigated.

One of the fast track projects of the Eastern Nile committee of Ministers of NBI is the hydrological analysis and water resources development of the Tana-Beles basin. This project is a brief explorative study to estimate the dynamics of evaporation and rainfall in the basin in 2001 by using advanced remote sensing technologies.