The water scarcity of Africa: a political problem?

As we talk and write about Africa there is a certain narrative of doing so. Africa is represented in a way that it's dark, savage, poor, corrupt and filled with diseases like HIV, Ebola and diarrhea. It's usually this negative perspective that is shown to a majority of the rest of the world. As Binyavanga Wainaina (2006) puts it in his article 'How to write about Africa':, 'In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving' (Wainaina, 2006). Wainaina's description is one that is quiet familiar to the most of us. Another persistent stereotype about Africa is the big scarcity of fresh water. A resource key to survival. This water scarcity is described by Taylor (2006) in the following way: 'Water scarcity can broadly be described as a shortage in the availability of renewable freshwater relative to demand' (Taylor, 2009). Whereas most people belief the water scarcity Africa suffers from is only because of a lack of fresh water, this is not the case. In the figure below you can see that Central and West-African countries suffer the most from 'water scarcity' as defined by the water stress index. If you compare this map to the annual precipitation map of Africa, it shows an entirely different pattern. In general, the Southern and Northern- African countries are amongst the most arid countries in the world and therefore collect little water from precipitation. Despite the little amount of percipitation, their water scarcity is way below some central African countries such as the DRC, a country with a high precipitation and a tropical climate.

Figure 1: Map of national-scale water scarcity as defined by the water stress index (WSI) across Africa using data from the year 2014 (FAO AQUASTAT)

Figure 2: Annual water balance is an estimate of the available runoff after evapotranspiration

Comparing these two maps (precipitation and water scarcity) make us realise the water scarcity problem Africa is facing, is not because of a lack of water, it's a human induced problem which is highly caused by human decision making and therefore has a strong political dimension. To sum up: it's not about a shortage of water, it's about accessibility to fresh water. 

By realising the water scarcity problem is a political problem, we can analyse different political systems on continental, national and local levels and their effects on fresh water accessibility. We might consider the problem of having a big human root to be almost positive, as it might enable us to solve it. In this blog I want to find out how politics prevent or enable people to access fresh water resources. I will do so by using case studies of several different countries and places and try to place these cases into broader perspectives of the entire continent and therefore try to make comparisons between countries and regions and explain their differences in water accessibility due to their different politics.