Water and Politics in Africa

This thread of blog posts has explored politics of water in Africa including: water wars, River Nile management, sanitation, and community-based management.  On reflection, the wide variety of talking points has allowed for an expansive analysis on this subject. Furthermore, exploring specific case studies avoided tact generalisations commmon-place when speaking about Africa ( Binyavanga Wainaina, 2005) .  Conflict has been a recurring theme throughout. However, given the water scarcity, variability, increased demands and colonial imprints, this is hardly surprising and supports my initial assumptions of the blog's direction. Lastly, throughout these discussions, climate change emerges as the critical factor underpinning the future of water discourse in Africa. Despite uncertainty predicting exact rainfall and river discharge impacts, predictions entail fewer light precipitation events and more frequent heavy precipitation in the tropics as seen in figure 1 ( Myhre et al., 201...

On reflection, my posts so far have been dominated by conflict. Although this was a purposeful direction, I realised this route may overlook more subtle political discussions regarding water in Africa. Therefore, to try produce a more expansive blog, this post addresses the community-based model of water management. Community management offers an empowering, decentralised form of water governance situating end users as active decision-makers ( Schouten and Moriarty, 2003 ). By transferring ownership to communities and bypassing ineffective states, community-management offers a more pragmatic form of water supply. However, research points to woeful operational failure rates of 30-60% within Sub-Saharan-Africa countries ( Baumann, 2006 ).  Figure 1: Village meeting for community water project ( Source: CED ) Community-management appealed to overstretched governments and NGOs where they could transfer responsibility of provision to users with a 'clear conscience' ( Harvey and Reed...

As the weeks have passed in writing this blog, my initial omission of sanitation became too blinding to ignore.  However, u pon reflection of how "water is life, but sanitation is dignity"  ( Thieme, 2018 ) , I've decided to  explore the 'poolitics' of sanitation in Cape Town and attempt to 'examine the unmentionable' ( George, 2008 ). Within Cape Town, approximately 500,000 citizens experience insufficient sanitary services. This is partly attributed to colonial social stratification which forced Africans to the peripheries with minimal infrastructural investment ( Laporte, 2000 ). Furthermore, rapid urbanisation has caused demand for municipality services to exceed supply ( Enqvist and Ziervogel, 2019 ). Consequentially, citizens are forced to inhabit lower rungs of the 'sanitation ladder'. As seen in figure 1, open defecation is common.  Figure 1: A child defecates along a motorway ( Masixole Feni, 2016 )  Recent sanitation policies such as the ...