Water and Political Conflicts in Africa

Hello again! In this second post, I will try to go into a bit more depth on the Lake Chad basin and its vulnerability to conflicts on water. The Lake Chad region (dark grey on the map) is located in the West-Central Africa. The Lake Chad basin (white on the map) is constituted of four riparian countries; Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.  Map of the Lake Chad region and the basin’s four riparian states The transboundary basin has increasingly been the centre of attention of journalists, environmentalists, scholars and civil organisations as its freshwater’s quality and quantity has been deeply reduced ( Okpara, et al., 2015 ). Indeed, since the 1960s, the Lake Chad basin has shrunk by over 90% of its original size from 25,000 km2 to 2,500 km2 today ( Ruppel, Funteh, 2019 / Kusumawardani, 2017 ). It is considered as one of the most water-stressed regions in the world with critical socio-economic and political pressure ( Okpara, et al., 2015 / Ruppel, Funteh, 2019 ). Much of the 30 ...

Welcome to my blog!  I hope to provide over the next few weeks a space of discussions and interactions on Water and Political Conflicts in Africa. This first post will serve as an introduction on transboundary water resources in Africa and its unfolding disputes and cooperation efforts.  As Binyavanga Wainaina highlights, Africa is often represented as ‘one country’, ‘enemy of development’, ‘doomed’, ‘to be pitied, worshipped or dominated’ ( 2019 ). I think the focus on water and conflict fairly shows the opposite.  Water is a very complex resource, particularly in Africa, as it struggles from high seasonality gaps and great precipitation and relief variability while needing to address the challenges of global warming, rapid urbanisation and population growth. Africa counts 63 international river basins, shared by two or several countries, spread over 64% throughout the continent ( UNEP, 2012 ).  Africa’s major transboundary river basins by UNEP   Although Afric...