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28 Nat. Resources J. 645 (1988)
The State and the Management of International Drainage Basins in Africa

handle is hein.journals/narj28 and id is 663 raw text is: C. 0. OKIDI* The State and the Management of International Drainage Basins in Africa** INTRODUCTION Rivers or lakes are considered to be international if their surface settings traverse the territories of two or more states. In the case of a river it may form whole or part of the boundary of two or more states; alternatively, it may flow successively, through two or more states; some situations present a combination of both. In the case of a lake, it may actually be shared by two or more states. Thus, rivers or lakes as such are distin- guishable from the concept of drainage basin, where the latter is broader, constituting the entire catchment area which contributes both, the surface and groundwater towards a common terminus. There are about 54 international rivers and lakes in Africa. Out of that total, 11 drain the territories of four or more states, with the largest number of states drained by any one river being ten. Nineteen basins drain areas more than 100,000 square kilometers, and in all, the area drained by these international rivers and lakes is about half of the total areas of the continent.' That, certainly, is considerable reticulation of water systems in this vast continent. There have been attempts to organize the basin states towards the management of the water systems. The current institutions for such pur- poses include: Niger Basin Authority (NBA); Organization for the Man- agement of Senegal Basin (OMVS); Organization for the Management of Gambia Basin (OMVG); Kagera Basin Organization (KBO); Chad Basin Commission (CBO); and the Permanent Joint Technical Committee (PJTC), between Egypt and Sudan on the Nile Waters. Currently, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), under its programme for environmentally sound management of inland waters (EMINWA) is initiating an integrated regional development programme for the Zambezi River, later to be followed by Lake Tanganyika. The purpose of this paper is not to review the management regimes of *Research Associate Professor, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya. **Views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They do not have official standing as such. I. Data have been gleaned from the records at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). For a summary see UNECA, Problems of Water Resources in Africa. Doc. No. E/CN. 13/NRD/WR/Rev. 2, 49 (Oct. 21, 1976)) (Addis Ababa).

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