SWALIM stands for Somalia Water and Land Information Management, and the name says it all; it is an information management unit serving Somali administrations, non-governmental organisations, development agencies and UN organisations engaged in assisting Somali communities whose lives depend directly on water and land resources.

One and a half decades of civil strife in Somalia have resulted in the loss or damage of most of the water- and land-related information collected in the previous half century. By producing baseline information, assessing natural resources, searching for existing information sources around the world, SWALIM is recovering as much of lost data as possible. The project is also re-establishing data collection networks in collaboration with partner agencies, to facilitate better assessment of rainfall, river flow, groundwater resources, land characteristics, degradation and land suitability as well as improving flood warning and flood management.