During this short blogging experience, I feel I have only dipped my toe into the sea of topics which could be covered under this theme. But sadly, the time has come, for the concluding post of my blog…
I recall my first post, where I confronted the fact that representations of Africa often only show one side of the story, with people’s conscious and subconscious biases dictating what is written and said. My aim was to think carefully about the issues I wanted to write about, and to think carefully about how I wrote about them.
At the start, I had little understanding of how deeply the issues of water and politics were intertwined. I began with two posts about conflict and cooperation between riparian states in the Eastern Nile Basin, in which I learned about the factors which can promote cooperation. This was my first indication of the complicated relationship between water and politics. I found myself having to read lots of blogs, news and journal articles by a diverse range of authors, just to understand the broad spectrum of thoughts and opinions on the topic. It was particularly useful to read the work of African authors such as Dr Rawia Tawfik in Cairo, and her work on the GERD; and Dr Edward Ademolu in the UK, who wrote about racialised representations in the media. These allowed me to understand different perspectives.
The competing national interests in water cooperation then led me to question whether there is a benefit to shifting this responsibility away from governments and towards the private sector. Again, what I learned, was that the answer is never black-and-white. In fact, a combination of private, public and community-oriented actors is needed to facilitate sustainable water management. I hope that the individual case studies on the Eastern Nile Basin and the Dolphin Coast helped to illustrate my arguments, though perhaps I could have included here more examples of bottom-up community-oriented approaches.
As I gained a better grasp of the history between water and politics, I knew that I had to apply what I had learned to the present day, and even the future. Whilst I had prior knowledge of the importance of water in adapting to climate change, my perspective shifted when I considered the effects from the perspective of those who arguably played the smallest part but are forced to bear the weight of the consequences. It made me question with whom the responsibility lies. Whilst it was frustrating to read about the slow and uncoordinated global response, I sincerely hope and believe that progress will accelerate in coming years.
Finally, it was surprising how much I enjoyed writing this blog, and how beneficial it was to have my blog as a place to reflect on how my own perspective was shifting. I hope that all of this has helped me to achieve my original aim, to contribute to a ‘balance of stories’ about the wide-reaching issues of water and politics in Africa.
Thank you for reading!
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