Blogging Off

As I reach the end of this blog series on the water politics of the Nile basin, I would like to look back at my blogging experience over the last few months. When I began this journey back in October, I had never written a blog before or written any academic work in this sort of informal style. So as you can imagine, my first few posts proved to be quite the challenge. However, as I progressed, I really started to enjoy the blogging process and looked forward to the sense of achievement after uploading a new post and seeing it displayed on my site. It definitely helped that I found my topic extremely fascinating and loved researching different ideas! I have always had a passion for history, so being able to include an element of this into my writing on the intersection of water and politics in the Nile Basin, was very enjoyable and refreshing given the usual strict guidelines for academic work. The colonial legacies of water treaties was a reoccurring theme in my blogs, showing how history is not something that stays in the past but plays a significant role in many of the key events today.  

Although it is the end of my blog series, it is not the end to water politics in the Nile Basin or to the tensions and debates that arise from it. As the world changes and develops over time, so does the politics of a region. In recent times this can be shown by South Sudan with their independence in 2011 after 2 rounds of civil war spanning decades (Martell, 2011) and their subsequent addition into the Nile Basin Initiative. The independence of South Sudan will also bring about changes to Nile water allocations, which will undoubtedly cause further tensions between the riparian countries. This example highlights how water politics is always changing and will continue to do so in the future. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog series; found the posts informative and have maybe been inspired by a particular topic and gone away to do your own research! I have definitely found the experience rewarding and it has opened my eyes to how blogs are a great source of information and enjoyment. I will leave you with a fitting image of the sun setting over the River Nile! 

Source: Mongabay, 2012