Women are fetching water from the shore of Lake Chad Source: BGR

Small Scale Mining in the Great Lakes Region Source: BGR

Africa is richly endowed with natural resources like water, metallic and non-metallic minerals, fuels, agricultural and forestry commodities. Improper and non-sustainable use of natural resources can result in socio-economic tensions, which may develop into political conflicts. Often such tensions and conflicts not only affect individual countries, but happen to occur across national boundaries. Only transboundary and supraregional cooperation will be able to solve these problems.

In Africa, German development cooperation is therefore strengthening projects which follow a supraregional approach. In the natural resources sector BGR supports the management of transboundary watersheds and aquifer systems,  it assists in making small scale mining and trading of mineral commodities transparent, and together with the partner countries it develops possibilities for a sustainable use of geothermal energy.