How Serious Is Water Stress In Africa And The Nile?
According to the BBC, water stress could lead to potential conflicts around 4 rivers, the Nile, Niger, Zambezi and Volta. Within 25 years 50% of African’s are predicted to be living in water stress (including economic scarcity).The current definition of water scarcity is less than 1000 cubic metres of water per year per person. However, this map shows that Africa isn’t short of water. It by large can fully support itself and its water needs. The main problem within Africa is that it cannot afford the infrastructure to set up water networks to get water to its people. The only places of Africa that actually suffer from physical scarcity are the Northern Arab states and parts of South Africa. However, the Northern Arab states and South Africa are relatively rich thus are able to ensure water supplies for their people one way or another. I.e. oil rich Libya can afford to run desalinisation plants if needed. Due to poverty, war and bad infrastructure water cannot be obtained by the masses in a safe and usable way thus the majority of the population lives in water poverty even though it is all around them.
The problem with the Nile is that the area around it suffers from extremely low rainfall every year. The population is ever growing, so is the demand for water, but the supply of water hasn’t changed at all. Therefore as countries upstream Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia choose to dam off the river Egypt will be faced with a huge problem the more upstream countries use the less Egypt has.It already poses to create the next set of wars in Africa. Egypt feels it has a hereditary right to access the full extent of the Nile (territorial integrity) since its nation has lived off of it for thousands of years. Ethiopia and Sudan are flourishing economies looking to develop and as mentioned earlier megaprojects like dams are highly attractive (Territorial sovereignty) . It is therefore inevitable that Egypt will become increasingly water stressed. The rest of Africa will also remain so but for them it can be averted if they can be alleviated from poverty or investment can help set up water infrastructure.