Following on from last week's wider-scale introduction to the politics of water and development in West Africa, this week's blog will centre specifically around Ghana's water resources and the challenges faced by contamination, a key component of inadequate water supply (Adelana et al, 2008, Fayiga et al, 2017), observed here as chiefly arising due to insufficient governance.
In terms of surface water resources, Ghana is well endowed, with Lake Volta being the largest artificial reservoir in the world based on surface area (Gansah et al, 2016). The nation’s geology however, dominated by crystalline rocks, means groundwater flow is heavily restricted to joints and fractures within crystalline rock formations (BGS), resulting in surface water being the central source of drinking-water for five million people in the Northern regions (Mintz et al., 2001).
Moreover, as posited by Buckley & Achilles, 2016, in excess of 70% of urban sanitation facilities in Ghana are shared, with such access having an increased associated risk of diarrhoeal disease (Heijnen et al. 2015). This exhibits the dangers of relying too heavily on shared and surface waters, with Ghana epitomising a prime example of how freshwater availability does not necessarily relate to the proportion of the population with access to safe water (Damkjaer and Taylor, 2017).
Access to safe water is instead linked to alternative factors such as increased pollution, as addressed by Nsubuga et al., decreasing the quantity of operational water markedly (2004). One such primary source of surface water contamination in Ghana is Illegal gold mining or “Galamsey”, with gold accounting for around 9.1% of the nation’s GDP (Duncan, 2020). Use of chemicals in mining and agriculture, combined with resultant rock weathering (Taylor, 2016; Bugenyi and Lutalo-Bosa, 1982), has led to Ghana’s water resources, being described as, "Ungovernable" (Yeleliere et al., 2018), with an estimated 60% of water bodies polluted (BHRC, 2017). Furthermore, these issues are not solely limited to surface water resources such as the Volta Lake, but have also dramatically increased levels of arsenic in groundwater (BGS), having severe health implications and damaging food production.
Paul Mensah, A 'Galamsey' outlines how a lack of demand for his agricultural produce led him to mine. SciDevNet.
It is shocking to learn of the harm to the kidneys, nervous system and heart (CSIR, 2016) due to contamination, in conjunction with the devastation to Ghana's chief export, cocoa. The cocoa beans that constitute many products consumed across the globe originate in Ghana, providing the livelihoods for over 700,000 farmers (Kolavalli and Vigneri, 2020). Gold mining is thus observed as having a plethora of knock-on implications, resulting in the highly politicised contestation of land, polluting groundwater and soils and leading to the loss of crops.
Illegal gold mining occurs on a cocoa farm. Source.
The failures of the Ghanaian government to adequately protect land and water resources prevails as the primary cause of inadequate water supply, highlighted in the recent $2 billion deal with China, which looks to mine forests of the Upper Guinean Forest (ForeignPolicy, 2018). Moreover, existence of weak integrity mechanisms mean issues of water insecurity are exacerbated by corruption (Bellaubi and Pahl-Wostl, 2017), with a third of the population paying bribes in 2017, and water services being one of the key corrupt sectors (Rahman, 2018). Likewise, a series of high-profile murders in recent months including the director of the Ghana water company (ModernGhana, 2020), has only proved to worsen trust and insecurity.
On reflection however, I have noticed that, in European media especially, there has been a clear oversight of the efforts made by the Ghanaian Government in recent years, with the poverty and corruption in Africa pilot project which aims to empower communities to demand transparency and accountability in the provision of water (Rahman, 2018). It is clear that further government alterations are immediately required to ensure a cut-back of illegal mining and corruption, whilst outside actors must also acknowledge Ghana's successes, such as the recent free water directive in the face of COVID-19 (Smiley et al., 2020).
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 riv
As addressed in previous blogs, water in West African nations such as Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire is facing severe challenges in the form of misallocation and pollution, with climate change heightening pressures further ( Kundzewicz et al., 2007 ). These issues are compounded by the transboundary nature of water in the region, with my next two blogs investigating such shared water resources in West Africa and the cooperative strategies employed to alleviate tensions and negotiate more equitable utilisation of water ( Tawfik, 2016 ). It can be noted that 90% of all of Africa’s surface freshwater is in the form of river basins and lakes that are shared by two or more nations ( Goulden et al, 2010 ), with transboundary aquifers (TBAs) representing an estimated 42% of the continental area ( Altchenko and Villholth, 2013 ). I was astonished at the true extent of such transboundary water resources in West Africa specifically, with all countries in this region, except for Cape Verde, sha
Having looked at surface water contamination in Ghana last week, this week I will be investigating management of water supplies following conflict, addressing Côte d'Ivoire’s successful water privatisation, and comparing this to the pitfalls of water management in Sierra Leone. Both Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone share similar stories, having gained independence in the early 1960s and having since been marred by conflict, with Côte d'Ivoire's armed rebellion in 2002 splitting the nation in two ( HRW, 2011 ), and Sierra Leone’s 1991 to 2002 Civil War claiming some 70,000 casualties and displaced 2.6 million people ( UNDP ). UN Troops in Côte d'Ivoire . Source . This persistent unrest has had numerous adverse implications on sanitation and water quality, with mass-urbanisation following the conflict placing a strain on sewage and sanitation facilities in urban areas, heightening the risk of water-borne diseases such as Guinea worm ( MAP International ). In
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