Visualisation of problems and solutions to ensure access to water resource

Usually, before construction of small reservoir infrastructure in the Upper East Region of Ghana, the future users of the reservoir are given the opportunity to give feedback as to their needs, want and concerns through a series of participatory approaches. The future of the infrastructure is also discussed and communities are stimulated to form various types of associations to ensure that levies are paid and maintenance is carried out. However, once the infrastructure is physically ready, developers leave the communities and the extension agents to deal with this new infrastructure, relatively unsupported. This paper discusses the results from a small research project which studied the infrastructure problems that water-user communities are faced with after reservoir construction. The focus of the research was on the use of visualization methods as communications means between researchers, water-user communities and agricultural extension agents to examine how they can collectively come up and discuss solutions to deal with these problems.