Water and Politics in Africa

  Map of the Nile basin showing major infrastructure, with active reservoir storage volumes shown for each location, ( Wheeler, K.G., Jeuland, M., Hall, J.W. et al, 2020 ). It is interesting to note that the expected reservoir storage volume for the GERD has increased from 14 to 74 bcm . Hello everyone! After having a look at the historical relations between Egypt Sudan and Ethiopia, I wanted to understand why the GERD specifically is such a controversial project. Indeed, it is far from being the first dam on the Nile, and will probably not be the last. So what are Egypt's, Ethiopia’s and Sudan’s positions on the issue? There are many expected benefits and risks of the GERD, for all three countries involved. For Ethiopia, it is clear that the production of electricity through the dam will boost the economic development of the country. Indeed, the dam will produce more than 6,000 megawatts , which Ethiopia intends to use, but also to export, as part of its strategy to become an ener...

Today, I attended a lecture by Dr Marina Ottaway, as part of UCLA’s webinar series ‘Nile River Basin in Crisis’, and wanted to share my thoughts about it. She mostly focused on the historical context and the impacts of political developments in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, which I thought would be a very relevant topic for my second post. What struck me in her lecture, is that all three countries were mentioned separately, as if they were not interdependent in the past. And in a way, it is true. Egypt has kept full control over Nile waters since its independence. Current allocation of water between Egypt and Sudan is still based on an agreement negotiated in 1959 , which only allowed them a share of 25% of Blue Nile water, while the other 75% goes to Egypt. However, as Dr Ottaway explained, this never led to major tensions between them, because Sudan was unable to use its share of the water anyway (due to a lack of technical capacity and a reliance on rain-fed agriculture). Colonial remn...

Hello everyone!  Welcome to my blog about political conflicts related to water in Africa. My name is Lucie and I’m a final year European Social and Political Studies student at UCL. Over the course of the next few months, I will be posting weekly reflections around this topic, trying to understand more about the challenges of hydropolitics. My main focus will be the Nile River basin and the specific case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).  Preliminary reflection I would like to start with a reflection about a video I stumbled upon this week (in French, sorry about that). In this video, the entrepreneur Ragnimwendé Eldaa Koama faces French president Macron. In a brilliant metaphor comparing Franco-African relations to a dirty pot, she reminds him of the imbalance of relations between France and Africa. She makes a very interesting distinction between the verb ‘to develop’ and the reflexive form that is mostly used in French ‘to develop oneself’, and thus argues th...