The Politics of Water in Africa

KEYWORDS: Water, Development, Power, Hegemons, Data, IWRM Welcome back!  In previous posts, we’ve seen how Africa’s history of colonialism is linked to its current relationship with water and politics through targeted displacement of communities and inherited water laws that exacerbate inequality. This final post is about the relationship between the control of water and regional power.  There is a high potential for conflict over water in Southern Africa as all the states are competing for a diminishing resource that has a significant influence on regional power and economic development. There is also an increased level of complexity due to the uncertainty of climate change . One source of regional power disparity in relation to water is a historical lack of data sharing between riparians . This is largely due to the inherited colonial management plans for river basins not including any agreements to do so, leading to regional hegemonies. The data imbalance exacerbates power...

KEYWORDS: Colonialism, Politics, Water, Development, Southern Africa, Hegemons, Transboundary Laws, Permit systems Welcome back to part two of our analysis of the effects of colonialism on water management in Southern Africa! Inheritance of colonial laws Both internal and transboundary laws regarding water access were written by colonists during their control over the continent. As previously mentioned, local forms of social organisation and resource management were disregarded in favour of Western distribution patterns, and significantly, these laws were inherited by the newly independent African states . This usually entailed handing over control of large water management infrastructure such as dams and pipelines to the state and giving white settlers riparian rights to water. These laws took a long time to be addressed as since gaining independence states had more urgent priorities such as focusing on creating infrastructure and policies to support socio-economic development, al...