New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014 | Page 13
New Water Policy and Practice
electricity shortages.
It is a matter of fact that many of Africa’s rivers are shared between more than
one country in a variety of geographical
configurations. This is cited as the potential
cause for conflict. Further, it is often stated
(and taken for granted) that the development of water resource infrastructure on
shared rivers should be undertaken jointly
by riparian states. To this end, it is recommended that River Basin Organizations be
established by riparian countries and be
given sovereign powers to undertake such
development and manage the water.
These recommendations appear
reasonable and more or less consistent
with practice in other infrastructure sectors where cooperation is necessary to join
roads, railways, and energy grids. Yet it ignores the fact that the shared rivers already
provide the infrastructure linkages that other sectors need to build. And the assumption
that joint projects are inherently preferable
is often incorrect because Africa’s water resources are (with notable exceptions in the
south and north of the continent) still barely
used. There are thus usually better national
projects (in terms of cost and location) than
projects shared between a number of countries—and that is before the transaction
costs of cooperative projects are considered
(this is documented in more detail in Muller
2014). What is required on shared rivers is
some system of communication to ensure
that information about hydrology and other
dimensions can be shared and proposed developments and their cross-border impacts
can be discussed.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated
in practice that the institutional requirements for this can usually be met by inter-governmental committees rather than
stand-alone institutions. Indeed, evidence
from other parts of the world including Europe (with the Rhine) and South East Asia
(the Mekong) suggest that areas of water
management that require the involvement
of national governments are best organized
on a cooperative rather than an integrated
basis, in order to ensure effective liaison between sectors within each country which
is often more challenging than the liaison
between water authorities of different countries. In Africa, almost all effective river basin cooperation that has produced demonstrable outcomes has been organized on the
basis of ad hoc inter-governmental cooperat