It is a tragic irony, that the Great Lakes region of Africa, which has been the theater of the most brutal genocide in modern history, could be the center of the greatest economic prosperity on the continent. A magnificent proposal exists, which could provide the basic energy and transportation infrastructure to transform one-fourth of the continent, into a flourishing economy, and lay the basis for integrating the entire continental economy for the first time in history.
—Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, 1997.
Transaqua: An Idea for the Sahel.
Exec. Intelligence Rev.
The Congo River has fascinated developers for years. Stanley saw it as the way into Africa: “This river is and will be the grand highway of commerce to Central Africa.” Other early travelers concurred, including one with an unusual name for someone venturing into unknown territory—Lt. Emory Taunt of the US Navy. Lt. Taunt landed at the mouth of the Congo River in 1885 and explored the region while his ship toured the coast. He spent an exciting six months fighting off hostile natives, cannibals, and debilitating fevers, and was able to get back to his boat and later report to the Secretary of the Navy that “. . . when in camp, the American ensign was hoisted over my tent, and while on the Upper Congo my flag was always, from sunrise to sunset, hoisted at the bow of the launch.”
Taunt returned to the Congo in 1888 as the official US Agent and died there three years later. He concluded that although the Congo Valley was rich in natural products, and was as yet totally undeveloped, a demand existed for American cotton products, canned goods, and lumber, and it was a demand that increased every day.
In later years, while diamonds, gold, oil, and other precious natural resources from this region held the attention of the world, dry African countries to the north were intrigued by the one natural resource that has since become even more precious to them than all others: water.
What bothered them was the great quantity of water debouching from the river into the South Atlantic, like blood hemorrhaging from an open wound. Ideas soon surfaced on how Congo water could be put to better use. In the late 1980s, the most interesting concepts came from Italy, where the Società Bonifica had been tasked by its host agency, the Italian Institute for Reconstruction, to promote a series of initiatives for African development. From such beginnings evolved the Transaqua Project.
Like some exotic tropical plant, it blossomed and grew and thereafter developed into the scheme that Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, an international activist and writer on global affairs from Winchester, Massachusetts, described as “. . . unlike any commercial proposal made for infrastructure development of any part of Africa, for the simple reason that the motivation behind the project is not monetary profit, but actual development.”
Her reasoning is based on the fact that the Transaqua investment costs are not only millions of dollars in foreign investment, but the absence of wars, the millions of human lives saved from starvation, and the social peace and international conscience that will come when it is up and running.
The original project design in 1988 was based on the idea that the northernmost reaches of the Congo Basin overlap with the southernmost part of the Lake Chad Basin and the headwaters of the Chari River that feeds Lake Chad.
By 1997 the concept of a “riverway” had evolved, a broad 1,500-mile navigable canal that would wind along the northern crest of the Congo Basin. It would intercept the drainage of the Congo in the region of the Ubangi River and connect it to 800 miles of existing river channel that would take it to Lake Chad (Map 5, p. 141). In recent years, the Lake Chad Basin Commission has presented a more reduced scheme that would link the water transfer to the proposed Palambo Dam, a hydropower dam to be built on the Ubangi River near Bangui, one of the major tributaries of the Congo River. The dam is a structure proposed by the Central African Republic in coordination with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The connection between the dam and the Chari would be made via a 114-mile tunnel that would draw water from the dam impoundment. As a result, the Congo would lose 5% of its flow, but once it reached Chad, Lake Chad would act as a reservoir for development.
Since they share Lake Chad and some of the rivers leading in and out of it, in one stroke irrigation schemes in Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon would gain a perennial source of water; the fisheries on Lake Chad would be revived, allowing the people to again take up their lives in and around the Lake; and, last but not least, the papyrus swamps would be saved, on which many of the Yedina people are so dependent.
Heads of state of the Lake Chad Basin Commission committed themselves to the project and commissioned a feasibility study in 2009. The project became even more attractive on paper by incorporating all sorts of multiplier effects. Planners in the early stages saw the potential for linking it to other major schemes, including a “hub” that would be created where the canal connected to existing rivers. The hub would be a river port served by the Trans-Africa Highway, a road planned to cross Africa from Mombasa to Lagos, and tied to international rail lines that are projected to serve the region. A free-trade-zone industrial park featuring agricultural, food, and woodworking plants, textile mills, and marketing facilities would be the centerpiece of the hub. The Lake Chad Basin would also gain 12–17 million acres of semi-intensive irrigated land, and the riverway and a road connection would allow for transit to the Atlantic (Lagos), Pacific (Mombasa), and Mediterranean (through Tripoli) ports. All of which would make Central Africa a world center for hope and development.
Would it work?
On paper, yes; in practice, however, it would require a major push on the part of Africa and the international community to get it started. But it has two things going for it: the water is there in profusion, and the gradient is downhill from source to sink.
Economically it promises everything; technologically it is innovative and timely; but environmentally there would be a great many problems. The prospect of digging a 114-mile tunnel is daunting in itself, but the second phase would require the widening and strengthening of 700 miles of existing riverbeds, following which would be the construction of canals and control structures in order to implement 12–17 million acres of irrigation projects. But with so much at stake in the Sahel, and with Lake Chad in an advanced state of environmental decline, the project right now seems to be the only solution.
In many ways it reminded me of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) program in the United States. A federally owned corporation created by congressional charter in May 1933, the TVA’s service area covers a diverse region including ten states in the US, and a TVA international program extends the concept of integrated river basin development throughout the world. In the ’70s and ’80s, the international program suffered a number of failures that were ultimately corrected. It now has succeeded far beyond the expectations of most of its supporters, among whom are counted many conservatives and liberals in a refreshing case of bipartisanality. Today the TVA brings nations and international developers together with the goal of modernizing Third World agrarian societies using the TVA scheme as a model.
The Transaqua project is an excellent example of what was discussed by Dr. Marcel Kitissou, historian and political scientist at George Mason University in Virginia. He noted that the rise or decline of nations goes hand in hand with their ability to master water. In the time of the pharaohs, this meant digging canals using local labor, the cost of which was reckoned cheap though thousands died in the process. As an example, the Transaqua project planners cite a Russian proposal to change the flow of rivers that now empty into the Arctic. The water instead would be diverted to the dry regions of Kazakhstan and of Uzbekistan by means of a 1,400-mile navigable canal, at a cost of about $18 billion. But the environmental cost of such canals might far outweigh the construction cost. Consider, for example, the Qaraqum Canal, an 854-mile-long legacy of the Soviet Union that is the longest canal in Central Asia and one of the major causes of the Aral Sea disaster. This canal was never lined; as a result it loses water at a rate of 30–70%—a horrendous loss further exacerbated by the water that seeps out and then evaporates, causing widespread salinity in local soils.
Diverting the Congo to save Lake Chad is attractive only if the environmental impacts can be surmounted. There is also one large drawback which has be addressed and lies at the root cause of the Lake Chad disaster itself: the fact that the disappearance of the lake was caused not only by the extraction of water from the river but also by the general drying of the region due to weather and man’s activities, especially the extensive cutting and clearing of vegetation in the basin.
That all has to be brought under control, if only to demonstrate to potential donors that lessons have been learned from past mistakes. This means that the Transaqua Project must be preceded by a major conservation effort. A “business as usual” approach will no longer work in the Sahel with global climate change staring everyone in the face.
The place to begin this effort is not in the riverbeds but on the land, where overgrazed, treeless dry depressions must be reclaimed. The terrain in the Sahel is often so arid-looking that people forget that water does exist underground; it comes from the runoff created by rainstorms or flash floods. In areas that are reforested, the aquifers are recharged more easily. If water is brought back to the region, these shallow aquifers can be supplemented by water seeping into them from the Chari River, Lake Chad, and the surrounding wetlands.
Why is this groundwater so important? Because it will supplement the water flowing from the Congo during good times, and will be the lifesaver in the event that the river ever runs low or dries up during droughts that are sure to happen with greater frequency in the future. To ensure that the groundwater will recharge, it is especially important to have a working program that manages the trees, shrubs, grass, and wetlands of the region in a responsible way.
Groundwater resources are used daily in many parts of the Lake Chad Basin, even now after the lake has dried up. And it’s old news that groundwater buffers the effects of dry seasons and droughts, but in an arid region this cannot be overstated.
The ability to exploit groundwater in arid regions can determine the livelihood of communities, whether they are small rural or larger communities that practice modern intensive agriculture or industry . . . the processes governing flood water infiltration is the key for sustainable water management in arid environments. (From: Groundwater Recharge in Ephemeral Rivers of Southern Africa International Workshop, Cape Town, South Africa, 2007.)
Technologies are already in place in the Chad Basin that are going forward: rain harvesting, sand dune stabilization, windbreaks, agroforestry using native trees, green belts, and protection of the fauna and flora of national parks are all in place. But they must be intensified in order for the development objectives of projects like Transaqua to work.
The largest user of water in the region, the irrigated farming sector, must also demonstrate that it can change from wasteful water practices now in use, such as overhead sprinkler irrigation, to drip irrigation, a cheap, easy way to cut water use by 25–50%. Drip or trickle irrigation does away with sprinkler pumps and costly piping. In addition to saving water and power, it improves yield and the quality of produce. Equally important will be an ongoing effort to drain fields using perforated, corrugated plastic tubing to prevent salinity, and larger drains to channel end-user runoff water into fish farms, and above all the use of filter marshes—places where the newly acquired Congo water can be refreshed.
Where is the place for papyrus in all of this? A recovery of Lake Chad would give life back to the lake-edge swamps and a return of the lifestyle of the Yedina; but more important, it would provide an opportunity to use papyrus in even more contemporarily relevant and productive ways. Presumably the Transaqua Riverway, with its canals, newly opened irrigation schemes, and transit corridors, will bring about major changes in water quality and a steep rise in pollution. There will be a need to keep pollution in check and to refresh water that is gained at such great cost. This means water treatment will have to be in place, for which more and more engineers are recommending the use of managed wetlands or filter swamps.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineering’s online magazine reported recently that construction and operation of such wetlands typically comes to one-fourth or less the cost of conventional waste treatment systems. Also, the wetlands are said to be completely free of objectionable odors, because the sludge is kept aerated. They cite one example of a reed bed constructed at a cost of $45,000 that performs so well, it eliminates the need for a conventional installation with an estimated cost of $200,000 to $500,000.
During the design and implementation of the Transaqua Project, papyrus filter swamps could make an important difference, mitigating many of the impacts, conserving precious water, and providing more habitat for nature tourism, an area of development that will surely follow as Central Africa is opened up to the world at large.
On a field trip into the Congo Basin years ago, flying west from Kinshasa the plane dipped low and the pilot said to me, “Inga,” pointing to the Congo River and a barrage across a side branch of the main stream. I was properly impressed. Inga is the name of the town where a barrage called Inga-1 was built in the early ’70s. Later, Inga-2 came along. Both taken together affect only a small portion of the river at the place where they were installed. Designed to generate 1,775 MW of electricity, they have had little effect on the papyrus swamps or other wetlands up- or downstream. Then came news of a dam called “Grand Inga,” to be preceded by a smaller project, “Inga-3.” Together, they are designed to span the entire river and divert the flow into a neighboring dry valley. When the two are completed, 52 turbines would generate up to 40,000 MW, more than twice the production of China’s controversial Three Gorges Dam.
Grand Inga would not only affect all of Africa but would play a role in the future of southern Europe as well. The amazing thing is that this project follows on the heels of Transaqua, a project that itself has the potential to affect over one-quarter of the continent.
My initial reaction on hearing this was: “Here would be a problem if there ever was one.” For the first time, the mighty Congo River would be brought to heel. What would happen when such a large body of water was slowed in its course to the sea? The amount of water involved is so large that local or even global water cycles would be altered. A case in point is the building of the Aswan High Dam, which had adverse effects on Egypt and the downstream Nile, where it caused increased rates of erosion, salinity, and the spread of disease. Its effects were compounded by a negative impact on the Mediterranean. The Aswan High Dam so diminished the annual flood of water and silt into that sea that it markedly depressed the marine fisheries, an effect that continues to this day.
How would papyrus swamps on the Congo be affected if the river backed up into the interior part of the basin, the region that now contains the existing wetlands (Map 5, p. 141)? What would happen? My guess was that papyrus would initially adjust: the swamps would float or grow up to the new water level. But if flooding continued and a lake were formed, the new growth exposed to open water would be battered by wave action and much of it would break apart and float downriver, causing problems there. All thoughts about the region being so remote that things would remain unchanged vanished. Nowadays, no place is safe.
Then came the good news. It seems that because the flow of the Congo River does not show the seasonal variation so obvious in other rivers, it is possible to build Inga-3 and Grand Inga as “run-of-river” systems in which sizable impoundments would not be required. Run-of-river systems, instead of holding back water, simply divert the water into large pipes or tunnels called penstocks. The penstocks then feed water to power station turbines that in turn generate electricity. The water leaves the station and is returned to the river without altering existing flow. This eliminates the need for costly storage dams and the need to flood large areas. In turn, this means there would be no change in the flood regime and few, if any, upriver effects.
Better yet is the prediction of the developers that the energy derived from a run-of-river project would qualify as “green” energy in terms of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming. Thus, carbon credits sold to developed countries would become an additional source of revenue for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
So, the news was better than expected. But not long after initiation, plans for Inga-3 and Grand Inga became muddled, as the DRC promised a large share of the newly planned electric output to an Australian company, BHP Billiton, in order to power a very large aluminum smelter. Hardly a sustainable use of new “green” power, especially as the process of aluminum smelting is a notorious polluter of air, water, and soil. Recently that deal has also fallen through, leaving the project hanging.1
Another idea floated was to build a 3,700-mile transmission line through tropical rainforest, across the Sahara and Darfur, through Egypt and across the Mediterranean to bring electricity to . . . not poor Africans, but wealthy European consumers!
Although the Inga project in the long run will conserve papyrus and wetlands, it does no good if the wetlands are not incorporated into part of a national sustainable development effort in which everyone is involved. Another large drawback of the project, as it is presently designed, would be the overall effect on the country’s economy, and the perennial problem of where the money would wind up. That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind. Unless the government and the economy are in sync with the needs of the people, no new era of change or lasting development will happen.