Nigeria Working to Save Lake Chad. Russia Powering Africa With Nuclear Energy

Proposed Transaqua Navigable Canal to Refurbish Lake Chad in blue

May 20, 2019

Nigerian Water Minister Adamu’s ‘Battle To Reclaim Lake Chad’

May 16, The {Daily Trust} of Nigeria has published an article on the efforts by  Nigeria’s Water Minister Suleiman Adamu for the inter-basin water transfer to reverse the shrinking Lake Chad with Transaqua.

“Perhaps, the most cheering moves by the present administration in the last three years in the water sector is the renewed interest to save the drying Lake Chad,” says the article, reporting that Adamu organized the International Conference on Lake Chad, Feb. 26-28, 2018 in Abuja.

“Experts at the conference, including the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) agreed with the position of the Federal Government of Nigeria that it was time to find workable solution to recharge the drying Lake, which they said had depleted from its original size.

“One of the workable solutions suggested at the conference was to transfer water from the Congo Basin to the Lake Chad Basin [Transaqua, ed.], which Nigeria’s water minister says is technically feasible based on earlier studies conducted by a Chinese company, PowerChina….”

“Experts agreed that transferring water from Congo Basin down to the Lake Chad is a herculean task that requires huge money and time and thus its impact cannot be felt immediately,” the article says, quoting some engineers who say feasibility studies might take years. This is the view of those who put the cart before the horse, and want to first see whether the color of flamingos will be affected or if rare species of snakes would be threatened, before proving the technical feasibility of the project.

However, as concerns financing, “Hope rises recently, when the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres agreed to help raise $50 billion for a project to help raise $50 billion for a project to help revive the drought-stricken Lake. President Muhammad Buhari was said to have written to the UN scribe to co-chair the fundraising session with him and his acceptance response was delivered by the President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina in Abuja. With this many believe that if the current efforts to reclaim the lake are sustained or intensified, glory days lie ahead.”

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Nigeria’s President Buhari Continues Organizing Support for Transaqua

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari won the support from the President of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, for the “inter-basin water transfer” to save Lake Chad, the technical name for the Transaqua project. Meeting Espinosa in Abuja, May 7, Buhari “stressed the role the international community needed to play in the endeavor, since recharging the lake was beyond the financial power of the affected countries,” says a statement issued by Buhari’s spokesman Femi Adesina.

In a separate meeting with Espinosa, Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama said: “We are looking to have the support of the UN and your support in particular, to address this challenge. One of the mechanisms we have identified is to recharge the Lake and it is going to be capital intensive efforts and something in the order of $40-$50 billion estimated and clearly, we are going to leverage on the international community because this is a huge resources and we look for your support.”

On her side, the UNGA President Espinosa, a native of Ecuador, said:  “It is a huge thing. And as a geographer, I can tell you. When I look at the map of Lake Chad and that in less than 40 years, this lake went from 24,000 something to 2,000 square kilometers, I have concluded that this is one of the major climate change disasters in this continent.

“So, that is a very touching example of how we need to tackle development and security together.  President Muhammadu Buhari has told us also that  there is no peace and security without development and there is no development without peace,” she said.

President Buhari had described the combined effect of the impoverishment and terrorism in the Lake Chad region. “The condition of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country is pathetic. We have at least a million children who neither know their parents nor where they come from.”  Damage to infrastructure, particularly in the Northeast, has been horrendous: “Bridges have been blown up, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, and other buildings have been destroyed. All these will be rehabilitated, and every form of international help is welcome.”

Russia’s Growing Involvement in Africa’s Nuclear Power Projects

In an article in OilPrice.com today, Vanand Meliksetian, an energy and utilities consultant, points out the growing Russian interest in Africa’s energy development in general, and in establishing nuclear power in Africa in particular.

After showing that energy poverty is a significant problem in Africa in holding back its economic potential, he writes: “Russia’s energy industry, in comparison, is booming. Its state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom has an order book of 34 reactors in 12 countries worth $300 billion. Recently, Moscow has set its eyes on Africa where most states have either already struck a deal with the Kremlin or are considering one.”

The lack of access to a reliable and affordable source of energy is a severe impediment to Africa’s economic development. Also, Africa is urbanizing much faster than the rest of the world. African cities are expanding by 8% every year compared to 2% globally — which puts even more pressure on the existing energy systems.

In view of this development, Russia is keen to offer nuclear power to the African countries by working out deals which would allow them to adopt nuclear power. “The Russian deal is particularly appealing to countries lacking nuclear know how, due to Moscow’s comprehensive offers regarding financing, construction, and operation of the facilities. Currently, Rosatom is experimenting with a contract known as build-own-operate, under which ownership of the plant remains in Russian hands while energy is sold to the host country. This new type of contract is appealing to several African states which lack the means to finance construction.

China’s experience: Helping transform an African desert into a garden

William Jones

Editor’s noteWilliam Jones is the Washington Bureau Chief for Executive Intelligence Review and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. The article reflects the author’s opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

With the upcoming visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Italy, there will no doubt be some discussion of cooperation between the two nations on the African continent. For Italy, helping to resolve the dire economic situation in Africa is both a humanitarian and an economic concern. The devastated economy in many African countries is bringing more and more refugees to Italy’s shore, and the burden is taking its toll on the Italian economy. For China, Africa has always been a particular concern having shared in the condition of underdevelopment for so many years. Even when both were clearly developing countries, China offered its assistance to its African brothers.

One of the most significant projects in that regard is the Transaqua project. This project would take some of the water from the Congo River, a river with the greatest flow of water in the world, and through a series of canals to the Chari River which flows into Lake Chad, a lake whose surface has been dramatically reduced from 25,000 km2  in 1960 to 1,500 km2 today.

The water transfer project would help revive the lake, and with the construction of dams and power plants along the canal, would help to bring development to the region, directly affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa and Nigeria, through which it would pass. In addition, it would also bring economic benefits to Niger, Cameron, Chad and Congo Brazzaville as well.

People crowd the oceanfront area along the Galle Face green in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 20, 2018. /VCG Photo
The Italian engineering company, Bonifica SpA has been instrumental in working out the plans for this project and is fully committed to it. In 2017 Bonifica and Powerchina entered an agreement for the joint development of the project. China, with its own extensive south-to-north water diversion project, possesses a good deal of expertise in dealing with such a project. Such collaboration also fits in nicely with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has received strong support from the Italian government. The Transaqua project developed by Bonifica has in part been developed by PowerChina.

Representatives from both Bonifica and PowerChina were invited in 2018 as speakers at the International Conference on Lake Chad, in Abuja, sponsored by the Government of Nigeria. The final declaration of the conference stated that Lake Chad needs to be saved and that its current situation demands immediate action. The Italian government at the time pledged 1.5 million Euros (1.7 million U.S. dollars) to start the Transaqua feasibility study.

The expansion of the BRI to Africa has kindled new hope in a continent that had virtually been abandoned by the West in terms of large development projects. The Mombasa-Nairobi railway, the Nigerian coastal railway, the Chad-Sudan railway, the Port Sudan-Khartoum railway have already provided the template for industrializing the entire African continent.

President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer attends the Oslo Humanitarian Conference on Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region in Oslo, Norway, February 24, 2017. /VCG Photo
While China has been ground-breaking in returning to the long-awaited – and much-delayed – project of African industrialization, the enormity of the project is of such a magnitude, that China alone cannot do it.  But the BRI opens the possibility of working together with other Western nations in realizing this goal. And the cooperation with Italy on the Lake Chad project can serve as a paradigm for how the BRI must work.

While some Western nations are trying to depict the BRI as a geopolitical “ploy” by China, anyone looking at the effect of the project on the recipient countries will see the falsehood of these claims. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.” And to the extent that countries overcome their fears and begin to work with the BRI and contribute their strength to developing other countries, they will better understand the importance of the project and its more profound implications for global development.

China has made great gains in reversing the effects of desertification by means of their water diversion projects, their reforestation efforts and their irrigation projects. If some of this know-how were to be applied in Africa, it would help turn the devastated Sahel region into a veritable garden, which it once was. And the lessons learned can be used on a broader scale to change the nature of life on this planet – for all its people.

*Lawrence Freeman has been an advocate of the Transaqua inter-basin water transfer project for over two decades. I am the Vice Chairman of the International Scientific Advisory Committee to the Lake Chad Basin Commission