1. Introduction

Welcome to my personal blog exploring the relationship between water and politics in Africa! I’d like to preface not just this first post but the entire blog by making transparent my positionality and being thoughtful and conscious of the way I depict representations of the African continent. I am a privileged university student in London originally from Malaysia but have lived in the Philippines for seven years. I have only traveled to one country in Africa before, Morocco, on a family holiday and thus have an extremely limited first-hand perspective of the multitude of environments, cultures, issues, climates, etc. that span the continent. In writing about and while trying to gain a deeper understanding of why and how issues of water scarcity arise in a continent that I am not very familiar with, it is vital I am intentional in the way I craft a certain narrative about Africa throughout this blog. The article ‘How to Write about Africa” by Binyavanga Wainaina satirically highlights the many tropes that feature commonly in fiction. It illuminated to me the challenge of questioning and unpicking the various internalized stereotypical depictions of Africa I myself have accumulated from media, artwork, and novels; it is important I continue this habit as I write academically as well. 

In the same vein, a common characterization of the African continent is that of a singular country. This mostly Western portrayal is harmful and in order to avoid such generalizations, especially as a human geographer wanting to investigate the issue of politics and water scarcity, I will seek to be specific in the ways I describe, synthesize, and create my understanding of these issues. As such, I choose to geographically focus my blog on the Sahel region.