9. Reflections & .. The End !

In this final post I wanted to take the opportunity to summarise and reflect on the path of my blog over the past weeks, noting down key findings which might provide insight regarding the future of water management in Africa. 

• Analysis of water scarcity measurements depict the nationally-limited perspective of existing methods, as well as highlighting the lack of a necessary holistic approach to water management. This is evidenced in post 2, where construction of the GERD illustrates the coming need for transnational cooperation of water management. Posts 6 and 8 further emphasise the transnational nature of water resources in Africa requiring better understanding of the geological nature of both renewable and non-renewable water sources. 
• Evaluating the structure of current water management has evidenced the need for a more nuanced approach than current governmental and private organisations are providing. Posts 2, 3, 4 illustrate the growing citizen participation movement and moves to decentralisation of power, shown in post 7 to be fundamental in the coming battle with climate change. 
• Technological and scientific advancements are pivotal in improving water management systems, and are to be utilised alongside emerging forms of political organisations, shown to be continuously fundamental as national representations for transnational cooperation (posts 7 and 8). 
• Water infrastructure and management can themselves be analysed as ontological representations of existing modes of power, for some they represent governmental responsibilities to citizens and evidence of the need for government power (post 3). As an artefact of material culture, water infrastructure is an enabler for political participation and can provide alternate means of political identity where ethnic separation may have lead to inequality in regions (post 5). 

I had originally expected that combining the topics of politics and water in Africa would lead to a focal point of conflict and how this shapes water management and scarcity issues in the region. However the majority of the literature I found led to the combination of my political and anthropological background to explore the organisational structure of management systems, and potential future outlooks. Although the geographical locus of North Africa may not appear so cohesive as originally intended, I hope the common themes and method of analysing water management has sufficed to be an effective method of association between posts!

Finally, I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it, and that it has created meaningful topics of thought ! And I leave you with an aesthetically uplifting image, of a town in Southern Morocco which recently obtained EU funding for rebuilding its sewage system, diverting the original pipeline away from the shoreline.

Source: authors' own photo. Located in Taghazout (تغازوت), Morocco