•  bamako
• Wednesday, November 02, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Several major new dams are being constructed on the Niger River. It's a positive sign of growing investment in agriculture and energy, but it also has some observers worried.

The new dams not only raise ecological concerns, but are also provoking difficult negotiations over equitably sharing the resources of a river basin that extends over two million square kilometres.

'There are nine countries in the Niger basin, but their interests are divergent. There are certain countries - such as Mali and Niger - which don't want any dams constructed upstream,' said Bi Tozan N'Guessan, an expert at the Côte d'Ivoire Water Ministry.

The Niger River Basin Authority is the coordinating body for the 4,200 kilometre-long river, bringing together the governments of Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria. Since 2008, the Authority has authorised the construction of three multi- purpose dams: at Fomi in Guinea, at Taoussa in Mali, and at Kandjadji in Niger.

These new dams will provide benefits that spill across borders. 'The Taoussa dam will provide electricity to Burkina Faso and Niger, for example,' says Ferdinand Bélé Gohou, president of a Guinea- based non-governmental organisation called West Africa Mountains and Forests.

'The dam at Fomi will also be valuable to other countries in the Niger basin.'

The Fomi dam is intended principally for hydroelectric power, but its reservoir will create opportunities for fishing, say its supporters. Areas around the reservoir could prove suitable for raising cattle and other types of livestock as well as for agriculture. The new body of water could also provide habitat for aquatic birds.

According to Gohou, other countries in the basin will benefit from the Fomi dam's capacity to be a regulator of water levels in the Niger at different times of the year. 'This is important for agriculture because in the countries located downstream, it will allow for irrigation during the dry season,' he told IPS.

But ecologists fear new dams will have damaging effects downstream, particularly for the more than a million people who live in the Inner Niger Delta in Mali.

The country's colonial-era Markala dam - which feeds large- scale irrigation projects - as well as the newer Sélingué hydroelectric dam, completed in 1980, have caused the water level in this fertile and ecologically-diverse wetland to fall by more than 20 centimetres, shrinking the annually- flooded area by 900 square kilometres.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement