Water and Political Conflicts in Africa

Hi guys! This post will be a final summary on water and political conflicts in Lake Chad.  This blog has highlighted the huge importance of the shrinking of the lake in exacerbating socio-political tensions in the region. More broadly, it has helped me recognise the role of hydropolitics in the development of the region. Indeed, it has emphasised the use of water as a war instrument for violence, a political tool for peace and a driver of conflict and of negotiation.  Environment Stories Winner on the Lake Chad crisis,  photo by  World Press Photo Contest in 2019 One thing that surprised me is the multi-scale aspect of water conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin. When I first started working on it, I originally expected intrastate disagreements and negotiations around the regional management of natural resources. Yet, I never thought of farmers-herders disputes for instance.  My blog development has been heavily influenced by the work of Dr Uche Okpara, a key sc...

Hi! This is just a brief post to recommend the  2020 TED Talk of Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim on the benefits of indigenous knowledge for addressing issues of climate change in the Lake Chad region.  Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim by Afrique Connection in 2018 The environmental activist, part of the Mbororo community in Chad, talks about the dramatic effects of climate change on the Lake Chad Basin’s resources and on her traditional nomadic herder practices. She expresses the consequences that it had on the people’s social life, especially, the migration of men to other parts of the basin or even to Europe, in order to feed and sustain their families, and ‘those left behind’, namely the women, who have to take up the role of men for security, food and water. Most importantly, she advocates in favour of using indigenous knowledge in order to find coping mechanisms and survive in the water-stressed environment of the Lake Chad. Integrating traditional knowledge with Western-centred technolog...

Hi guys! This week’s post will examine the hydropolitics of the Lake Chad and the premise of peace from a regional security cooperation.  The Lake Chad Basin and its large wetlands, aquifers and groundwater is essential to the four riparian sates, as well as Algeria, Central African Republic, Libya and Sudan. Consequently, peacefully sharing such resources in the current complex unstable context of the lake is a challenge to regional security ( Asah, 2015 / Ani, Jungudo, Ojakorotu, 2018 ). Hydropolitics have thus been the focus of development programmes, claiming the need for a regional approach on security in the Lake Chad Basin ( Ani, Jungudo, Ojakorotu, 2018 ). Intrastate cooperation has been fostered by the 2015 redefinition of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) as a collective security scheme driven by the state-members of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) under the recognition of Boko Haram as a regional crisis ( Albert, 2017 ). The MNJTF military operations have ...

Hi guys! This post will examine farming practices in the complex context of the Lake Chad Basin, the changes that have been undertaken in order to cope with the latter and the conflicts as a consequence of political deficiencies.    The Lake Chad Basin’s resources have been central to farmers and herders in the region. Traditionally, food production for the population has been sustained by nomadic herders and pastoralists, which migrated in the region according to the seasonal variations of droughts and floodplains ( Zeiba, Yengoh, Tom, 2017 ). The shrinking of the basin along with the population growth have put a tremendous pressure on the goals of food security, the ambitions of economic and political stability and the livelihoods of farmers and herders. Herder in the Lake Chad from the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2020 Two outstanding changing practices have emerged in the current context of increased food and water demand. First, the farming challenges of hi...