Water and Politics in Africa

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...