Water and Politics: An Introduction

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Hello, and welcome to my blog Hydropolitics: Africa Edition. This blog will take you on a journey through the politics of water, drawing on transboundary water resources and the political implications of shared management over water in both Northern and Eastern Africa.

 I decided to focus my blog on water and politics as water is an essential good that humans can't go without. Water is always political, and politics involves thinking about who makes big decisions regarding shared resources, who decides where and who gets access to a specific source of water, and who puts a price on such a vital resource. My interest in this topic stems from my passion for social sciences and the nature of shared resources and cross-border collaboration in spreading access to a single, highly demanded resource. The theory of the Tragedy of the Commons introduced by Hardin (1968) conceptualises this interest by highlighting a situation in a shared-resource system where people act independently for their own self-interest when using such a resource despite the common good of all users which ultimately diminishes or ruins the resource through the actions of each individual. This concept is applied to the case of water in Africa, and how governments act in an attempt to provide water to all of their citizens. Do they work collaboratively with neighbouring countries? Do they operate out of their own self-interest? Do water management programs benefit all of those sharing the resource, or do they diminish supplies for others while increasing supply for themselves? 

 Through the next few weeks, I hope to answer these questions by looking at various specific case studies on water management to gain an understanding of the current case of hydropolitics in Africa. 

Map of Northeast Africa: Flow of the Nile
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012)

My next blog post will focus on economic and physical water scarcity in the context of East African water to highlight that a country can have abundant water resources, but without proper management and infrastructure, the problem lies in the ability to access the water that is available rather than there being physical water shortages. 

 Until then, I hope you are looking forward to the next post- and for this ongoing journey through water and politics in Africa!

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