Water, Politics and Africa

Welcome back to this latest edition of Water, Politics and Africa where we are going to look further at the privatisation of domestic water supply in Africa, turning out attention to two regions in South Africa. Recap Last week’s post investigated water use in the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and the conclusion was that since the late 60s circumstances have in many ways deteriorated to a shocking extent. Often discussed as a possible cause of this issue is privatisation, with “privatisation of water and health services in East Africa [having] taken place on a grand scale since the structural adjustment era of the 1980s, but not in ways that fit easily with the World Bank or IMF prescriptions” ( Thompson et al., 2000 ). However, while privatisation has certainly brought some predictable troubles with it (such as street vendors of expensive water having an interest in piped supply of water failing), researchers ( Thompson et al., 2001 ; Bayliss, 2003 ) ...

Before starting to understand what the best way for Africa to progress into the future regarding the use of its water is, we must understand the past and especially the current situation there. Therefore, I will try to answer the following questions in this post, focusing to an extent on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, who are hopfully quite representative for other countries in Africa: How much water is used in Africa? What is it used for? Who owns this water? Numbers and statistics For data on domestic water use for the average consumer, the 1972 book Drawers ofWater by Gilbert F. White, David J. Bradley and Anne U. White and its sequel 2001 Drawers of Water II by John Thompson et al. provide much useful information on the changes in domestic water consumption in East Africa. The authors of the original Drawers of Water picked 16 sites in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and recorded various statistics on domestic water usage for inhabitants of all economic backgrounds. The 2001...

Hello World! Welcome to my blog, Water, Politics and Africa . Over the next three months I will commence on a journey to explore how these three keywords overlap, trying to answer questions, explore resources, uncover connections and understand current events. The focus of the blog will be on the domestic water supply sector, although I will possibly venture into other sectors if the opportunity presents itself. Water, the most fundamental human necessity, has always been political. In today's Africa, water is in many places contested and scarce. Regimes and groups of all sorts fight for power. Ideologies are put to the test. Foreign corporations wish to further their interests. Traditional ways collide with modern technologies. Who will come out on top? Who will the water belong to? Be welcome, comment and share, stay tuned.