Managing Drought Impacts: Case Study of Mali, Africa

Abstract

Developed countries such as the United States have proposed planning frameworks for managing the impacts of drought. This paper describes a process that is a modification to these frameworks for application to developing countries in Africa. A case study for the Niger River in Mali, Africa, is used to illustrate the process. A spreadsheet based multicriterion decision analysis model is presented. The model is used to analyze the sensitivity of management alternative rankings to the type of planning, that is, strategic, tactical, and emergency. It is also used to analyze the sensitivity of the alternative rankings to various stages of a drought and to priorities of different decision makers. The results show the importance of using an approach that integrates the tactical and emergency management with the strategic objectives of drought impacts management.