Politics of Water: A Focus on the African Continent

So far, our analysis of 'hydropolitics' has been based largely on the  visible : rivers, transboundary basins, and surface-level water transfer schemes . But beneath the surface, groundwater reserves embody a hugely important - yet very often overlooked - dimension, particularly across Africa. Today I will attempt to illuminate the need to consider groundwater alongside above-ground, 'blue water' sources and the merits of integrating it with existing water management paradigms by again examining our focus region of southern Africa. Invisible importance As posited in a 2006 USAID report , whilst integrated water resources management spells out a promising framework using surface river basins as the unit of management, it overlooks two key notions: groundwater aquifer systems often don't correspond with the surface water management unit, and groundwater systems are transboundary by nature. This is especially relevant in Africa, where 71 discrete transboundary aquifer...

Following my post introducing the Orange-Senqu basin and LHWP, you probably wondered what Lesotho and South Africa's bilateral arrangement means for water distribution downstream. After all, discourse surrounding the 'hydropolitics' of transboundary basins typically emphasise asymmetrical effects between upstream and downstream riparians. Also, how has the basin been managed and to what degree of success? Today's post will examine these questions further. Basin management framework The Orange-Senqu river basin has an established record of regional and international agreements in place. Amongst one basin-wide and six bilateral agreements, the 1986 LHWP treaty and 1992 agreement creating the region's Permanent Water Commission in particular established the foundations for joint transboundary water projects, along with institutions overseeing them (Kistin and Ashton, 2008) . As part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) - an intergovernmental organisatio...

In view of current conversations being dominated by events up north in Glasgow - the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) - I wish to dedicate a post to briefly highlight the implications of anthropogenic warming on water distribution and 'hydropolitics' in southern Africa and the continent more broadly. This podcast episode I came across encapsulates some impactful and interesting themes surrounding the intersections of climate change and water. Although it mostly examines the Asian context, its ideas can be extrapolated to the African continent: With existing climatic and political dynamics of the southern Africa region, and exacerbated by climate change, water endowments will be far from static (Goulden et al. , 2009) . The IPCC's 5th assessment report  predicts that - although not certain - southern Africa will likely experience a modest general downward trend in seasonal rainfall, heightened drought vulnerability, and more erratic dry spell frequencies and precipitation ...

Previously, I introduced the premise of water contestation in Africa continentally, outlining a mismatch in water needs and distribution exacerbated by climatic and political factors. I now wish to delve into a region whose transboundary tensions, conflict, and mediation over water I find particularly interesting: southern Africa and the Orange-Senqu river basin. A large swathe of inland southern Africa is dominated by the previously mentioned kilometre-high plateau and a narrow coastal belt that is especially mountainous towards South Africa - this creates sharp topographic gradients, which have a marked effect on weather systems' movement, orographic precipitation, and hence noticeable rainfall distribution and vegetation gradients across southern Africa (Reason, 2017) . The Orange-Senqu basin lies in the heart of the region, with its main river straddling four countries: it rises from Lesotho's Maluti Mountains and traverses westwards across South Africa, Botswana, and Namib...

Water is a crucial resource - not just to sustain life but entire nations through supporting industry, agriculture, and trade. Accessing water, however, is in reality far from a simple feat, owing to discrepancies in spatial distributions of water resources, man-made demarcations, and societal demand, rendering water an easily politicised and contested resource. Welcome to my blog, where I explore the theme of water and politics in relation to development. I will examine just how inextricable politics and power relations are to any discussion of water access, focussing specifically on Africa. Few places beyond this continent exemplify the politics of water access more clearly: despite holding abundant freshwater at 9% of global supply  (Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2019) , a combination of colonial legacies and natural environmental landscape factors mean that Africa is today especially vulnerable to water conflict. In this introductory post, I will explore both these factors in a bit mor...