“Water is life,” said Sanusha Naidu, a foreign policy analyst at the South African think tank, the Institute for Global Dialogue. “But it’s not just that water is life – water is becoming a commodity of corporatisation and access. For Dhesigen Naidoo, a senior water and climate researcher with African policy think tank, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), climate change is now experienced first and foremost as a water crisis. Upstream-downstream Nile tensionsSome water tensions were drawn into the very borders that delineate the continent. Getting water right is a non-negotiable, “social, humanitarian, economic, and security” issue, Naidoo said.

Source: The North Africa Journal February 13, 2026 14:32 UTC