On the second day of the Atlantic Dialogues in Rabat, African officials convened in a panel about “Securing Water and Food for a Sustainable Africa” and discussed how water scarcity, mismanagement, and climate shocks are now directly shaping food security, regional stability, and migration across the continent.
Ibrahim Mayaki, the African Union’s Special Envoy for Food Systems, said Africa’s water reality makes cooperation unavoidable.
He noted that 90% of surface water and 40% of groundwater are shared across borders, which means strictly national approaches “reduce the space of the solution.” Some regional institutions function well, he said, but others remain poorly adapted.Mayaki listed three major obstacles: political resistance rooted in national interests, weak or incomplete data on water volumes, and inadequate technical systems to manage and distribute water locally.
Mayaki said that water is now central to entire food systems, covering production, storage, processing, and distribution.
With Africa’s population rising from 300 million in the 1960s to nearly 1.5 billion today, he warned that shortages will continue to threaten governance and stability.
Urbanization is making the pressure worse. Mayaki said governments underestimated demographic growth, leaving countries with no choice but to accelerate reforms. He noted that better governance and scientific innovation are now essential to keep up.
Former Gambian Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangara said regional diplomacy can work when countries recognize how tightly linked they are.
He pointed to cooperation between Gambia and Senegal on shared water bodies, describing it as effective preventive diplomacy that continued even when member states faced internal crises.
Tangara recalled Senegal’s decision to bring water security to the UN Security Council agenda in 2016, the first time the body formally examined the link between water, security, and stability.
He said climate extremes now demand urgent political will, noting how dams in places like Cape Town swung from 6% capacity one year to flooding the next.
He also warned that shrinking resources such as the Lake Chad Basin have contributed to the rise of violent groups like Boko Haram.
In coastal communities, he said overfishing by foreign fleets has pushed young people toward irregular migration. “Instead of building boats to go and fish, they build boats to cross the Atlantic,” he said, adding that poverty and lack of opportunity are fueling dangerous choices.
