Freedom Onuoha

The State and Water Conflicts in Africa: a Focus on Lake Chad (1960 ? 2006) Freedom Onuoha

Water is perhaps the most strategic and precious resource on earth, critical to the survival of nations and their people. However, as water is becoming scarcer, other natural resources that depend on it are also experiencing decline in quantity and quality, often leading to conflicts in some transboundary watercourses. For many reasons, these water conflicts risks are evident in Africa. This monograph demonstrates that although water scarcity is a necessary condition for interstate conflicts in Lake Chad, other critical intervening variable such as the competitiveness of economic livelihoods, nature of international boundaries and the weakness of the supranational organization established to regulate the exploitation of resources of the lake interact to engender interstate conflicts in the region. The intricacy and dynamics of these factors were analysed critically. The analysis should help shed some light on the broader issue of hydroconflict, and should be especially useful to scholars, teachers and professionals in interested in hydropolitics, or anyone else who may be interested in the role of water scarcity in the incidence of conflicts in Transboundary water body.