Key to Peace in the Lake Chad Area is Water, Not Military Action

Four countries share borders - Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon - within Lake Chad, one of the largest lakes in Africa, and have formed a political union, the Lake Chad Basin Countries. Over 30 million people live around the lake - for them, it is a source of freshwater for drinking, sanitation and irrigation. Other countries indirectly connected to the lake are Algeria, Libya, Central African Republic and Sudan. The Lake Chad region, however, is one of the most unstable in the world. According to the 2020 Global Terrorism Index report, countries in the region are among the 10 least peaceful countries in Africa. Management of the shrinking lake has caused conflicts among the states that depend on it and this has made it more difficult for them to collectively fight insecurity in the region. To achieve peace, countries should focus on reviving the water body rather than on military activities, writes Saheed Babajide Owonikoko for The Conversation Africa.