1. Introduction: Diving Beneath The Surface

Hello and welcome to my blog on water and politics in Africa! 

To kick off this series, I would first like to reflect on the portrayal of Africa in western media and political discourse. Africa is often unfairly painted as a singular entity – one giant country plagued by poverty, disease, famine and strife, waiting for help from altruistic Western allies (Wainaina 2005). 

These highly stereotyped and oppressive representations are deftly encapsulated in this satirical video that I came across in secondary school, titled 'Who Wants To Be A Volunteer?'. 

Figure 1: Screen capture from YouTube video "Who Wants To Be A Volunteer?'

In the tongue-in-cheek parody video, volunteer Lilly must guess how many countries there are in Africa to win the grand prize of a chance to save the continent (or country, apparently). As one might anticipate, Lilly thinks Africa is a single country - the gameshow acknowledges this as the correct answer and sends her off on her quest to save Africa. 

Though this sheer absurdity is bound to elicit some hearty chuckles, the message behind the video is a serious one which draws attention to just how superficial and condescending Western interest in Africa can be. All that matters is that Africa needs to be saved - who cares if it's actually one country, or a huge continent comprising 54 countries, 1.4 billion people and 2000 languages (Woods 2019)? 

Figure 2: Infographic on common misconceptions surrounding Africa (Woods 2019) 

To me, this video thus serves as an invitation to dive beneath the dangerous generalisations that only serve to reinforce existing power asymmetries (Ayisi and Brylla 2013), and instead examine issues within Africa through a more critical lens that acknowledges and promotes a variety of perspectives. 

In the context of water, the predominant imaginaries propagated by popular media depict hot and dusty lands, dried-up rivers, and women and children balancing pails on their heads while trekking through deserts. 

It is true that drylands - climatic zones where annual potential evapotranspiration (PET) greatly exceeds annual precipitation (P) - make up roughly 43% of Africa (World Bank 2016, Huang et al. 2017). However, bearing in mind the need to steer clear of hasty generalisations, we must note the high spatial-temporal variability in rainfall, which can range from 71.4mm/year in Northern African countries like Algeria, to 11430mm/year in Central African countries like Cameroon (UN Water/Africa 2000). 

This variability, compounded by topological and hydrological features that result in varying amounts of groundwater and freshwater (Taylor 2004), indicates that not all regions of Africa are dry deserts that have little water. 

Indeed, the challenges of water security go far deeper than the mere issue of availability. Water is a multi-faceted resource with contesting uses ranging from domestic to agricultural and industrial, which means it must be governed. Furthermore,  access to water necessitates human interventions in the hydrological cycle (be it building infrastructure to store water or privatising water provision) which all serve as inherently political exercises of power and control (Mollinga 2008). A whole new cascade of concerns is then unleashed - how can water resources be efficiently and equitably managed at local, regional and international levels? 

Evidently, the problem of water security in Africa is a highly politicised issue, rather than one caused by just a lack of water, as popular media might suggest. There is so much to unpack, and I look forward to diving beneath the surface of these complexities over the course of the module.