Introduction to my blog

Politics and Water in Africa:

This blog aims to explore the relationship between water and politics in Africa. In the first publication, I aim to specifically outline the issue of water scarcity in Africa and establish whether the issue of water scarcity is driven by physical or human; namely political factors. In this first post, I shall define water scarcity, analyse water scarcity against physical circumstances namely precipitation before exploring human factors too. Lastly, I intend to give an overview on water storage and a few relevant methods with their shortfalls in order to try to explain water scarcity in Africa. More generally, this blog will aim to cover a multitude of issues pertaining to water and politics. This may include population, land use, food security and indeed water provision itself as these themes all have political elements within them.

 Figure 1: Annual Water Balance (UNEP,2012)  

Figure 2: Water Stress Index, 2014 (FAO AQUASTAT)

Water scarcity can be defined as “a shortage in the availability of renewable freshwater relative to demand” (Taylor, 2009). Figure 2 (above) shows the amount of water available to each African country. The general trends shows that, on balance, countries in west and central Africa are less ‘water scarce’ than North African countries such as Algeria and Libya. This trend is largely befitting of the map showing annual water balance in Figure 1. Indeed, Figure 1 shows us that central Africa i.e countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo have large rainfall surplus and Algeria and Libya, on the whole, are in relative rainfall deficit. Yet according to UNICEF (2015), only 68% of Sub-Saharan Africa has access to ‘safe’ drinking water compared with 93% of Northern Africa which leads one to conclude that the matter of water scarcity isn’t driven primarily by physical factors but more driven by human and, in particular, political factors. 

A major cause of water scarcity is its distribution and storage, or lack thereof. Many areas of Sub-Saharan Africa are subject to intense seasonality and thus highly variable rainfall. This is because the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone moves across the continent over the course of the year. Indeed, areas of Tanzania and Zambia vary between 2 and up to 23 days per month of rainfall depending on the seasons (ZIegler et.al,2013). The impact of such variability means that said  areas are heavily reliant upon a uniform rainy season in order to facilitate groundwater recharge and to provide water for irrigation and use. However, both Tanzania and Zambia are far less water stressed than Algeria and Libya when measured per annum (figure 2). That is to say, Algeria and Libya perhaps have far better and more sophisticated schemes in order to manage water storage. 

Sufficed to say, the techniques employed to store water in countries such as Tanzania are far more rudimentary than those in semi-arid/arid Northern Africa such as the Aswan Dam in Egypt. One such method is rainwater harvesting. Rainwater harvesting is a method whereby a roof is laden with an iron or a plastic sheet and is collect into a storage tank (Rockstrom and Falkenmark,2015). This method is rather popular in less developed countries because it is fairly rudimentary and easy to employ but at the same time is held somewhat hostage to inconsistent rainfall supply hence the issue many less developed nations in Sub-Saharan Africa struggle with water scarcity. A second method used is extraction from wells and boreholes. Indeed over 80% of rural water supplies in Sub-Saharan Africa derive from groundwater extraction (Calow et.al,2010). This method involves using a pump to extract water from subterranean sources into jerry cans or other forms of transportation. This method is also hostage to seasonality; that is to say, a below average rainfall season in terms of gross rainfall can seriously impact the effectiveness of this method.

To conclude, the main area of concern that this post seeks to address is that water scarcity is largely a product of political factors such as development of a lack thereof in Africa. As evidenced by the case of Algeria and other countries in semi-arid and arid North Africa. While receiving far less rainfall than other areas, much more of their populations have access to safe drinking water which should lead one to conclude that physical factors such as rainfall aren't as key to explaining scarcity as human (political) factors - it is far more connected with development than physical factors in my opinion.