1. Introductions; West African Water Politics and Hollywood.

My name is Sebastian Alsina-Olaizola and over the course of several weeks, I will explore the nature of politics and water in Africa, focussing in particular on West Africa, which consists of 16 unique nations and 400 million people. 

I have opted to look at the political aspects of water, specifically, "water conflict", defined as, “Any disagreement or dispute over or about water, where external social, economic, legal, political or military intervention is needed to resolve the problem” (Ashton, 2007), having recently returned from a year abroad in California. Here, I gained a brief insight into the politicised nature of water, even on a continent that holds the largest share of the world’s total freshwater (Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2019). I was able to kayak down the Colorado River, and learnt of the historic disagreements over the Compact Agreement which distributes use between the seven states the river runs through, as well as damming by the US, that has led to the river not flowing to Mexico since 1998 (Guardian, 2019). As a result, I learnt of how individual identities have been destroyed, with the Cucapá, a River People Tribe in northern Mexico being severely impacted.     

              

Map of West Africa. Source.

Thus, it is evident that water and politics is highly personal and increasingly important due to the difficulty of providing sufficient supply to meet rising demands, especially in more arid regions of the world such as Africa, a continent that holds only 9% of the world’s total freshwater (Gaye and Tindimugaya, 2019). Therefore, West Africa provides the ideal lens through which to expand my knowledge regarding water politics, with large water resources existing here, yet, strains associated with rapidly increasing populations, inadequate management and the compounding effects of climate change, combining with the negligence of TNCs, such as Shell’s brutal oil pollution in the Niger Delta for example, only serving to increase political tensions. Moreover, this blog will also investigate where successful cooperation exists, such as in the Niger Basin Authority. 

The Niger Delta, one of the most polluted places on earth.Source.

As a final point, I must address my own prejudices, with this blog providing a tool to educate myself and hopefully others. When reading Binyavanga Wainaina’s ‘How to write about Africa’ I was hit with a sense of guilt and found myself reflecting on my knowledge, or lack thereof, regarding Africa. Wainaina discusses representations of Africa in writings and media, outlining depictions of a ‘Darkness’, and ‘Tribal’ imagery, informing us that these stereotypes are the only way to analyse Africa, with images of AK47s being the norm, and celebrity activists sweeping in to help those in need. Unfortunately, a quick glance at some of the favoured films and documentaries of my youth highlights the truth of Wainaina’s piece. Hollywood’s “Blood Diamond” for example depicts a blend of fact and fiction that portrays a barbaric civil war consisting of child soldiers, mercenaries, explosions and a white American journalist being the one to successfully spread the message to curtail blood diamond supplies (Lambert, 2008). These hard-hitting truths mirror the findings of other key thinkers such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), that outlined the creation of an exotic Orient through Western Imperialist travel writings and paintings which sexualised the weaker ‘other’, when looking at Asia, linking back to earlier ideas of Livingstone capturing the British imagination of Africa being, ‘the dark continent’ (Driver, 1992). 

As a result of the above reasons, the following blog will endeavour to bring a detailed and truthful account of the multifaceted nature of water and in West Africa, utilising a variety of key case studies alongside scholars from both the Global North and South.