Water and Politics in Africa: Hydropolitics of the River Nile

  Historically, humans have always been drawn to water. The earliest human habitations can stem their roots back to river civilisations, while some of the current biggest cities in the world have been built around rivers, such as London, Cairo, Shanghai. I n modern times, it has some of the highest concentrations of human populations, with some of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. However, the Nile River Basin has a far longer history, as one of the cradles of civilisation ( Arsano 2007 ). Ancient polities and empires have existed across Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, while in the modern day, the sheer length of the river in traverses 11 diverse riparian states (Figure 1), with a multitude of cultures and peoples, as well as conflict, instability and impoverishment. From this, an argument can be made that there is no better way to look at how water in a political context has shaped human development than the biggest, and among the oldest inhabited, bodies of water i...