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Africa has more than 60 transboundary river basins which together cover more than 60 percent of the continent’s total area. In fact, every African country, with the exception of the island states such as Madagascar and Cape Verde, contains at least one such basin, and many countries’ territories are dominated by transboundary basins. In addition to transboundary surface waters, an unknown but substantial number of aquifers cross beneath Africa’s national borders. The result is that most water resource management in Africa is in fact transboundary water management.

Most formal management of transboundary waters is done through treaties, agreements and protocols between the riparian states which share a given water source. Despite the importance of these agreements, relatively little work has been done on their documentation and analysis. This website was established to help share information on Africa’s transboundary water agreements. The website contains references to the largest known collection of African transboundary water law, a collection containing over 150 agreements signed between 1862 and 2004. The agreements have been classified according to a number of criteria to aid in their analysis and comparison. In the future, we expect to create searches based on these classifications. Efforts are also underway to link the agreement references with electronic copies of the documents.

The website also contains links to other important electronic sources of information concerning international water law in Africa and in general. Finally, the site contains a bibliography of some 75 related documents.

Suggestions for change or submission of additional documents are most welcome. To do either, please contact us.