Johannesburg, South Africa – From lethal Cyclone Gezani in Madagascar and surging waterborne illness dangers throughout flood-affected Mozambique, to parched land and herds of useless livestock alongside the Kenya-Somalia border, the continent is beginning 2026 beneath siege from water‑linked local weather shocks – simply as African leaders collect for a summit that places the valuable useful resource on the centre of its agenda.
On paper, the African Union’s selection of water as its 2026 summit theme – with a concentrate on water as a significant useful resource for all times, growth and sustainability – seems apolitical. However specialists say it’s something however.
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“Water is life,” stated Sanusha Naidu, a international coverage analyst on the South African suppose tank, the Institute for International Dialogue.
“But it surely’s not simply that water is life – water is changing into a commodity of corporatisation and entry. It’s a humanitarian battle. It’s a local weather change battle.
“It’s a peace and safety concern.”
Water and battle
Though worsening local weather change and the pressure it places on assets is a essential stress level, analysts level to different flashpoints the place water and battle intersect – together with upstream-downstream tensions over shared pure assets, water getting used as a weapon of battle, and large trade claiming water assets at the price of human beings.
In Africa, water cuts throughout interstate disputes like Egypt and Ethiopia’s battle over the Nile, lethal tensions between farmers and herders in Nigeria over entry to the identical arable land, antigovernment protests over failed service supply in Madagascar, and the outbreak of well being epidemics within the wake of main floods and droughts.
It’s actually a “multitude” of competing or interlinked components which can be making a “vicious circle” of challenges individuals need to cope with, Naidu says, particularly in Africa, which is especially weak to local weather change.
With temperature will increase in Africa barely above the worldwide common, the continent faces a disproportionate burden from the local weather disaster, in response to the World Meteorological Group and local weather specialists.
For Dhesigen Naidoo, a senior water and local weather researcher with African coverage suppose tank, the Institute for Safety Research (ISS), local weather change is now skilled firstly as a water disaster.
“We’re speaking about floods and droughts and really excessive power storms which were skilled around the globe and in Africa with completely devastating influence,” he stated, noting that “our potential to handle that has actually diminished over time because the problem will get greater and larger.”
From desertification to very large flooding, “an excessive amount of and too little water have the identical influence” as they each diminish individuals’s entry to the useful resource, he stated.
This lack of entry results in water shortage in addition to elevated meals shortages, rising numbers of local weather refugees, and the upper prospect of battle, in response to Naidoo.
“Should you take a look at the Sahel and [across Africa], the correlation between the actions of al-Shabab on the east aspect and Boko Haram on the west aspect, and the desertification creep, there’s an virtually direct correlation [between strained resources and conflict],” he stated.
In areas the place there’s a shortage of fundamental assets like water, individuals are typically compelled to do no matter they will to outlive, Naidoo explains. “And generally it results in very, very dangerous safety outcomes.”
That is evident in northern Nigeria, the place an array of armed teams are recruiting amongst weak native populations, whereas within the center belt area, intercommunal battle between farmers and herders over shared pastoral land assets has turned lethal.
Even away from front-line battles, water shortage is heightening geopolitical safety issues. Observers level to electrical energy and water cuts that prompted indignant antigovernment protests in Madagascar final 12 months; and this week in South Africa, the nation’s Human Rights Fee referred to as for the water disaster to be declared a nationwide catastrophe, amid protests from many Johannesburg residents who’ve gone with out water for 20 days.
Upstream-downstream Nile tensions
Some water tensions had been drawn into the very borders that delineate the continent.
When European powers carved up Africa earlier than, and on the Berlin Convention greater than a century in the past, they crudely drew strains between tribes, territories, and key water sources.
Throughout Africa, 90 p.c of floor water is in transboundary basins and requires transboundary cooperation or treaties to handle, in response to the World Financial institution.
These embrace the Senegal and Niger River Basins in West Africa that cowl Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Niger and Nigeria; the Limpopo and Orange River Basins in Southern Africa, which cowl South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Namibia; and the Nile River Basin within the east and north, spanning Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.
Whereas the treaties that govern water sharing are working nicely in most areas, current tensions across the Nile have revealed the potential for future upstream-downstream battle, specialists say.
Final 12 months, Ethiopia inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), its most bold infrastructure enterprise on the Blue Nile, amid tensions with downstream neighbours Egypt and Sudan, which rely closely on the Nile and concern the Ethiopian dam will threaten their water safety.
“The extent of pressure is comparatively excessive in the meanwhile” between Ethiopia and the downstream international locations, significantly Egypt, who had been unable to dam the dam’s building, notes Magnus Taylor, the deputy director of the Horn of Africa mission at battle prevention suppose tank, Worldwide Disaster Group.
Past the technical operational issues of the dam, there are additionally broader tensions, Taylor says, because the GERD marks a historic shift in Nile energy relations.
“Egypt fears [the GERD] will problem each its sensible management over the Nile waters but in addition its broader political hegemony over the Nile basin,” he stated.
That pressure is then dispersed and “translated via different political and safety conditions which have been influenced by the GERD concern,” the analyst famous.
He factors to the benefit that Egypt’s backing of the Sudanese Armed Forces in Sudan’s ongoing battle has created for Cairo in making certain Sudan helps its view on the GERD.
Individually, Cairo has additionally diplomatically courted Eritrea, Ethiopia’s northern neighbour with which it has contentious relations, he stated, whereas Egypt has additionally supplied safety help to Somalia when Ethiopia pursued a sea entry cope with the breakaway rival area of Somaliland.
Water as root, website, weapon of battle
Taylor says that whereas the world isn’t but seeing outright “water wars”, water disputes are however shaping and intensifying different conflicts throughout the Horn of Africa.
For ISS water skilled Naidoo, “the notion of an inter-country battle based mostly on water is a really actual factor,” and upstream-downstream tensions escalating into battle are “a chance in a number of elements of the world and definitely in a number of elements of Africa”.
The Egypt-Ethiopia tensions are at present the clearest instance of a traditionally hegemonic downstream nation now having to play by the principles of an upstream nation that has asserted itself, he stated. However “many very huge economies in Africa”, like Nigeria, South Africa and Senegal, are additionally downstream international locations, he factors out.
“On the Niger River, Nigeria is a downstream nation and at present has very poor relations with its northern neighbours, Mali and Niger. And that could be a very critical concern about an upstream-downstream dynamic that may mimic what’s at present occurring between Ethiopia and Egypt,” Naidoo stated.
Water has traditionally been a supply of battle, he argues.
“The artwork of battle round water is nicely honed into the psyche of human beings,” stated Naidoo, who remarks that the first-ever useful resource wars in prehistoric occasions had been fought over water and meals – even lengthy earlier than oil.
However extra than simply the basis and purpose, specialists say water is typically used because the weapon itself.
Naidoo pointed to the wars in Sudan and Gaza as present examples “the place there’s a very excessive degree of the weaponisation of water at present beneath approach”. In each locations, civilians endure deprivation as provides are blocked and water sources are focused in armed assaults.
“We have now, for a really very long time, organised ourselves to have a casual settlement that every one events in any battle wouldn’t weaponise water. However occasions are instructing us that individuals are fairly completely satisfied to return on that,” the water skilled famous.
On the similar time, expertise is one other issue placing pressure on individuals’s entry to water. Communications infrastructure and AI data centres all require industrial-scale quantities of water for cooling, placing extra pressure on the provides that folks depend on.
This implies the prospect of water conflicts “will in all probability get loads worse”, Naidoo stated.
“We have now organised ourselves to develop economies which can be very extremely depending on common water provides. And so small perturbations within the system – being with out water for 3 days – is trigger for battle,” he remarked.
“You may’t tolerate it since you truly can’t do with out it. Not simply personally by yourself consumption, however as a result of the whole lot that works round you has a water dependency.”
Who’s accountable?
The size of challenges is regarding for specialists and observers, and lots of really feel these in management positions haven’t finished sufficient to mitigate the disaster.
The AU’s resolution to place water on the centre of its 2026 summit this weekend is essential, but overdue, Naidu says.
She says the continental bloc and nationwide governments have recognized in regards to the rising water disaster for years, however have largely didn’t act on the needed scale.
She additionally argues that the duty lies not solely with governments, but in addition with native officers, companies that exploit and pollute, and shoppers and civil society, who should change their behaviour and demand accountability.
Disaster Group’s Taylor says the AU could concern a communique on the summit, however due to the restricted remit of the AU, that is unlikely to translate into any binding continent‑huge water agreements that may be enforced.
Al Jazeera reached out to the AU with questions on this 12 months’s summit, however acquired no response.
For ISS’s Naidoo, treaties and agreements have a spot, however energy additionally lies with nationwide governments, who can work to help and scale up actual options already being produced at floor degree.
He sees a silver lining in African innovation tasks, together with non‑sewered sanitation methods, which deal with waste on-site via organic, chemical, or mechanical processes that rely much less on water, or tasks just like the “overhead aqueduct” system in Kenya’s Kibera, which presents a approach for areas with out conventional underground piping to get clear water to residents of the Nairobi slum.
These examples present that Africa isn’t solely a sufferer of the water disaster, he stated, but in addition a supply of potential options and an area the place the continent can train International South‑led management.
Getting water proper is a non-negotiable, “social, humanitarian, financial, and safety” concern, Naidoo stated.
“The conundrum is that Africa has a really excessive degree of tolerance to sure issues, like the shortage of providers or lack of respectable sanitation. A part of the explanation why we don’t make progress on this area is as a result of it’s form of accepted,” Naidoo stated.
“However you may’t be tolerant of getting no water,” he warned, “or you’ll die.”
