Water and Politics in Africa

So, our time is coming to an end! Hopefully, the last seven posts have shown that water management in Africa in general, and in Tanzania in particular, is more complicated than stereotypical representations of a ‘hot and dusty’ continent might have you think. Physical scarcity is present, but the barriers to effective water management are, above all else, political and economic. Colonial legacies in hydropolitics continue to complicate matters, benefitting some states and hindering others. Tanzania’s history of segregation sets a complicated scene for its urban water management as class based divisions proliferate, whilst its relationship with other riparian states has in the past challenged its development of the Nile Basin. The ever presence of the World Bank continues to influence management decisions, without any democratic accountability. Rufiji River , one of Tanzanias many natural water resources   By looking at the broader political landscape of Tanzania, rather than a mo...

The hydropolitical conditions spanning the Nile basin have altered the domestic water landscape within Tanzania. Egyptian dominance, supported by the Anglo-Egyptian treaty, has significantly restricted Tanzanians autonomous water development projects. This again raises questions surrounding Tanzanian sovereignty within the geopolitical, hydrological and financial landscape within which it exists.   In 2004, Tanzania announced plans to construct a ‘105-mile pipeline drawing water from Lake Victoria,’ , which Egypt blocked, stating that ‘Tanzania cannot construct any project without British permission’ as stipulated in the 1929 treaty ( Mahlakeng, 2017 :79). In a country where 4 million people don’t have access to clean drinking water, the Lake Victoria pipeline was intended for domestic use, hoping to provide clean water for up to 400,000 people , a number that was expected to grow to 900,000 over the next two decades. "These are people with no water," said the Tanzanian w...

  Transboundary water management is perhaps what immediately comes to mind when someone mentions hydropolitics. The political stability of East Africa is dependent on its hydrological stability, which is only achieved through the cooperation between the 11 riparian states that are home to the River Nile. ‘ As populations and economies have grown, water has become scarcer and more variable in certain locations’ placing even more pressure the Nile ( Petersen-Perlman, 2017 ).   Colonial legacies, and the power imbalances that developed as a result, remain central to the hydropolitics of the Nile Basin. The 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, among others, has worked to ‘structurally deny upstream riparian countries access to, and use of, the Nile’, instead granting ‘Egypt extensive and monopolistic use’ (Mahlakeng, 2017: 76-77) . Today, the World Bank continues to protect Egypt’s ability to ‘veto any construction projects along the Nile and its tributaries’ ( The Conversation, 2020 ), ov...

Through certain mechanisms, African countries are encouraged, perhaps pressured, to interact with international institutions and investors in a certain way. Questions surrounding the autonomy of recipient governments, sovereignty, and the might of international organisations such as the World Bank are unavoidable.   The World Bank was involved in the Dar es Salaam privatisation scheme from the beginning. To qualify as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC), a classification that would be worth up to $3bn in debt relief over time, Tanzania was asked to privatise its water supply. With ‘debt stock in 2000/01 standing at two and half times its annual revenue’ (Action Aid, 3 ), the Tanzanian government was not in a position to turn down financial assistance of that magnitude. As an increasingly ‘donor dependant’ country, donor agencies had the power to push for substantial policy change (Action Aid, 3), imposing policies on national governments, while remaining democratically unaccount...