Introduction

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 that development in Africa cannot come from the outside. 


Additionally, she mentions the downgrading vocabulary that is often used when talking about Africa, which Wainaina’s article ‘How to write about Africa’ also highlights. As a white European writing about ‘Africa’, I feel like addressing this topic is essential. In the course of this blog, I will try to be as specific as possible and to include papers and articles written by African researchers.


Topic and main case study

When thinking about case studies, I immediately thought about writing about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Indeed, I have some very close friends in Egypt, and have heard about the dam and the conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia quite often recently. I was therefore eager to learn more about the topic. After some research, I have decided to focus on the wider Nile River basin, including but not limited to, the conflicts surrounding the dam. The reason for this is that the Nile is such a crucial resource, which is facing a number of significant threats.


Overall, the Nile is an essential resource for all the countries it crosses. More specifically, Egypt relies on the Nile for 90% of its water needs. It is vital for the agriculture of the country, which relies mainly on high-intensity irrigation in the delta region, but also for the industry as well as domestic use. Both Egypt and Ethiopia also face increasing threats from climate change: sea-level rise threatens agriculture in Northern Egypt, and erosion in the Nile Delta, notably linked with the construction of dams upstream, poses an additional risk (p.16). It is therefore easy to understand why the GERD leads to tensions. Climate change could also affect the volume and runoff pattern of the Nile River system, adding another layer to the conflict. Finally, both countries are some of the most populated on the continent, with 102 million people in Egypt and 115 million in Ethiopia whose livelihoods depend majoritarily on the Nile, making it a very pressing issue. 


As Swain (2010) puts it, Ethiopia is the main supplier of water, and Egypt and Sudan the main consumers, which inevitably leads to conflicts, due to the importance of the resource and the evolution of usage and availability. 

The Nile River basin, (Allan et al., 2019). The Blue Nile, in Ethiopia, provides 86% of the water flow of the Nile, and is therefore the main supplier of water for Sudan and Egypt. This is one of the reasons why the GERD is such a conflictual project.



For all these reasons, the Nile River basin and the conflicts and cooperation attempts surrounding it will be the main focus of my blog. Towards the end of the period, I will also explore alternatives for Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan in terms of water provision and use.


I hope you’ll enjoy reading and I look forward to your comments!

Comments

  1. Clement25 November 2021 at 12:07

    A nice introduction and a good case study, well presented in a clear structure.

    ReplyDelete

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