Water and Politics in Africa

Welcome back to the first part of my final two blog posts! I’ve decided to look at the political factors and implications of climate change on water in Africa for these final posts, as it’s very clear that climate change is the next if not already the biggest threat to human life on earth. Today’s focus will be the inequities that have been highlighted by the possibility of a 'Day Zero' in Cape town back in 2018.   In the 2017-2018 period, the city of Cape Town in South Africa was in the midst of a severe year-long drought and an impending water crisis. The possibility of a ‘Day Zero’ where the 4 million residents of the city would be completely shut out from water supplies in their homes looked more and more probable. This ‘Day Zero’ was anticipated to take place on the 13th of May 2018, when all of the city’s dam levels would have reached a capacity of under 13.5% (Millington and Scheba, 2020) . Graph showing the level of water stored in Cape Town's 6 largest reservoirs f

Hello! Today’s post will look at the cooperation on Africa’s transboundary groundwater resources and aquifers.  ‘Many of Africa’s groundwater resources are stored in approximately 40 transboundary aquifer systems’ (Scheumann & Alker, 2009).  Groundwater resources in the past may have been conventionally only used for minimal water use but as the demand for water increases the need for better transboundary aquifer management also increases (Altchenko and Villholth, 2013). There is also increasing shortages and changing quality seen in surface water, thus many turn to groundwater resources to keep up with demands from a rapidly growing population and to keep the agricultural sector afloat in Africa. However, this has led to the over-pumping of these aquifers which mean possibilities of some countries not having enough water available for themselves and risks of conflicts arising between these transboundary countries (Hayton and Utton, 1989).  Locals in Africa measuring vibrations f

Hello and welcome back to my blog! These next few posts will move away from the Nile Basin and focus on case studies in Nigeria. This particular post will look at the politics surrounding the creation of upstream projects at the detriment of floodplains.  Floodplains are essential ecological and economic resources but the benefits they bring to local communities are not recognised enough. The continuous push to carry on with upstream projects has an adverse effect of diverting floodwater away from these wetlands that are critical to bringing economic benefits to so many (Barbier and Thompson, 1998) . Residents fishing in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands A brief summary on the various resources that floodplains bring to communities is that they provide food and income through fishing, vegetation for livestock and fuelwood resources and water for irrigation and domestic power and use. The soils in floodplains are more fertile than upland soil and thus brings agricultural benefits too. An examp

As my last blog post discussed the political grievances between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), this post will look further into how political cooperation between the Eastern Nile countries may not be as clear cut as first imagined.  In fact, economic cooperation between Ethiopia and Sudan, despite their failure to find common ground on water cooperation has been thriving in the last 10 years (Tawfik, 2019) . With the backdrop of the signing of the Declaration of Principles (DoP) on the GERD in 2015, there was renewed hope among everyone in the 3 Eastern Nile countries that cooperation on not just water, but all other resources rooted in the water sector such as food, energy and trade would be progressive too (Tawfik, 2019). However, is it possible for that to happen when even the fundamental resource that is contained in the other resources, water, is so difficult to come to an agreement on itself?  Rawia Tawfik in her article explains

Continuing from my previous post, this post will look at The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and how the construction of the dam has caused political clashes between the three countries involved, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.  The construction of the GERD first started in 2011, and once completed will be the 5th largest in the world (Wheeler et al, 2020). One of the major benefits the dam will bring is hydropower production, which a country like Ethiopia can greatly benefit from to bring energy and power to its people in urban and rural areas. There have been studies that show that energy consumption directly influences the economic development of many countries (Basheer et al, 2021). So, the GERD would significantly improve the economic development of Ethiopia too. However, the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan disregard it fearing the dam will drastically affect the amount of water available for millions that completely rely on the Nile for their water sources and that th

The Nile Basin is a transboundary water body system that covers around 10% of African territory and includes 11 African countries. This blog post’s focus is on the politics of transboundary water management in the Nile Basin. The Nile River Basin The various actions that take place within a transboundary watershed as one would expect spreads many benefits and externalities unevenly across the different states and for the people living in these districts (Jägerskog et al., 2007). With that of course there are increased chances of conflicts between the different regions that use the Nile basin. Therefore, it could be argued that the Nile basin needs to be appropriately managed in order to bring benefits to all its users and to reduce the externalities felt by some countries. However, the question that needs to be addressed is who is responsible to manage such a large basin that runs across several borders.  The ideas put forward in the paper by Jägerskog and others discusses the notion