Water and Politics in Africa

Artwork by Nigerian-born artist Temi Coker . The past several weeks of writing this blog have been enlightening to say the least. As we enter a Tier4 lockdown here in the UK, I have been reminded that as a male living in Britain, this pandemic has had a minuscule impact on my daily routine when compared to the intensification of existing inequalities examined throughout the African continent. This blog originated as an attempt to learn more about hydropolitics in West Africa, covering the shortfalls of inadequate governance in Ghana , the complexities of reaching an agreement in relation to transboundary watercourse in the LCB and NBA , whilst addressing  mixed use private and community-based approac hes  when recovering after conflict. After pausing in the fourth week to consider the need to elevate missing voices of African scholarship, with this experience illuminating the dominance of the field by predominantly white scholars, I learnt to adopt an intersectional approach when rese

The  #WeAreTired campaign in Nigeria, 2020. Source . Having studied the plight faced by the people of the LCB last week, a vital  consideration came to the forefront of my investigations, one which I admittedly naively lacked knowledge of. As touched on in my last blog, gender plays a pivotal role as a tool of war and terrorism in West Africa, with over half of Boko Haram’s suicide bombers being women and girls, some as young as 7 years old ( Markovic, 2019 ). These revelations led me on to investigate the broader gendered adversities that persist in the region, with this week’s blog post discussing the emergence of a so-called, ‘Shadow Pandemic’, whilst deliberating how gender inequalities within WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) further exacerbate these concerns.  Gender-Based Violence (GBV).                                                                                                                                      The simple act of ‘going to the toilet’ is a matter of per