ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of the groundwater management Policy, Legal and Institutional (PLI) framework for Malawi, which was conducted between 2017 and 2019 and benchmarked against a Desired Future State (DFS). The objective of the review was to identify the gaps and challenges and develop an action plan for addressing the gaps based on the Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have (MoSCoW) method of prioritisations. The study revealed that water resources planning discourse primarily often omits groundwater due to biased interpretation as opposed to exclusion in the existing PLI frameworks. When benchmarked against the DFS, capacity development at the district level, development of a full set of guidelines and advocacy for the use of the guidelines featured as significant shortcomings. The study concludes that intervention planning needs to consider proper siting of boreholes, infrastructure capital costs and recurrent operation and maintenance costs. The success of groundwater schemes relies not only on aquifer properties but also on similarly invisible institutional infrastructure starting at the community level. The study concludes by listing the Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have actions identified from the MoSCoW-based prioritisation. It is further concluded that implementing the MoSCoW actions in a phased manner will lead to improved realisation of the contribution of groundwater to water security in the Republic of Malawi.
