Africa - the desolate, barren wasteland rifled with poverty and strange cultures. Works on Africa seem to be one giant conundrum when it comes to present discourses. Western outputs have portrayed the African continent as a single entity, one that is stuck in an eternal cycle of poverty and misfortune. Others write about Africa through the lens of its unique cultures, mysterious-looking peoples and peculiar foods. Whatever you write about Africa, make sure that you depict the continent as one that is “to be pitied, worshipped or dominated” (Wainaina, 2019). One could say that this is an extreme view and yet works like these persist throughout the literature on Africa.
Maybe we should stop this. And maybe we should stop referring to everything in Africa as ‘Africa’. It’s about time we deconstruct these pre-generated imaginaries of ‘Africa’ and peer deeper into this not-so-special-it-should-be-romanticised continent.
Just like a surgical knife - precision is key. The closer we look at Africa the easier it becomes to see that in actual fact it is made up of 54 countries and home to over 2000 languages (Woods, 2019), - no different to any other continent in this giant world. This blog in turn seeks to focus on precision and will address the issue of hydro-politics within the Nile Basin, as well as touching upon relevant neighbouring basins. For reference of scale and context - see Figure 1:
Figure 1 is a classic illustration of the political tensions surrounding the ‘golden’ resource - water. This map uses a combination of several sources and illustrates the number of countries affected between the lower and upper basin of the Nile, their dependence on the Nile, and the relative importance of dams within the basin (Nile River Basin, 2021).
It’s common these days to talk nonchalantly about water issues in Africa but it’s a whole different matter to fully understand the water challenges that countries along the basin face. One could say it parallels that of a hornet’s nest - water challenges are laced with many complexities such as politics, gender and economics and is difficult to navigate around. One such challenge includes transboundary politics with no singular state having access or rights to the Nile.
The term hydropolitics can be succinctly defined as the study of inter-state politics regarding the management of shared water resources (Waterbury, 1979). Such a simple definition and yet most certainly not a straightforward issue. As shown in Figure 1, 11 countries rely upon the Nile’s resources to meet various needs such as water, food and energy securities. Due to the increasing drastic effects of climate change, the need for political cooperation has never been more important.
With projects such as the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, water has been placed at the forefront of political debates between countries such as Egypt and Sudan. Not only is the Nile important to these African countries, but it is also of international concern as well. Projects like the dam have attracted attention across the globe, with the United States already threatening to withhold development to Ethiopia lest the problem not be resolved soon (Mbaku, 2020). However, colonial histories have demonstrated that political cooperation is a difficult one to navigate. But that’s a whole other story for another blog post.
It seems that all I’ve accomplished so far is scratching the surface of a series of complex political issues in a continent that I have never stepped foot in. However, this benefits the blog to the extent that I am less susceptible to falling into the pitfalls of ‘romanticising my life in Africa’ or taking a stance that depicts me as ‘knowing better than everyone else’. At least in this respect I just might be somewhat less biased when talking about Africa - but no one is perfect, so I will try my best as a geographer to tackle the hydropolitics within the various basins, discuss some of the key issues facing them, and help to better inform your knowledge of this extremely captivating continent.
Comments
Post a Comment