Hardly a year ago, while posited on the white sand beaches of Ssese islands, someone made a revelation that forthwith made me cease construing the admonition of a water apocalypse as nothing more than bloodcurdling.

I was coiling almost like a centipede by a bonfire two burly men had worked up 200 metres away from the suite I lodged in when the innkeeper told me the ground I was seated on used to be part of Lake Victoria “not so far back.”

My eyes popped.

“Really?” I asked.

The innkeeper gave me an affirmative nod before he started banging on about how decimating of the island’s forest cover to pave way for the growth of palm oil trees has bungled the ecosystem.

“It doesn’t rain that much here nowadays,” he growled.

How would it when the woodland that helps capture carbon gas emitted into the atmosphere is no more! The carbon emissions (from the generators that rev up during the day as if in competition with factories) proceed to lacerate the ozone layer, exposing Lake Victoria, and indeed Ssese, to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. As a result, the water cycle around the Lake Victoria basin ends up being interposed.

This is primarily because the lake’s evaporation is not being matched by evapotranspiration (the process where moisture is returned to the air by evaporation from the soil and transpiration by plants). The end result of the aforesaid is that Lake Victoria keeps shrivelling by the day. In fact, one cannot help but shudder at the thought of how biodiversity in and around the lake – the biggest in Africa – will be affected when Uganda clocks 100 years of self-rule in 2062.

Climate change will not only have made rain a rarity, but also ensured that groundwater – which hundreds of thousands of wells thrive on – is not close to the surface. Water tables are expected to take a drastic nosedive as the recipe for a water apocalypse makes itself more pronounced. The chronic shortage of water the world over is expected to soar exponentially from the eight per cent (affecting some 500m people) mark it touched at the turn of the second millennium to 45 per cent (4bn people) in 2050.

This surge is largely because while the world’s population growth is in many respects infinite, water, which has long been squandered by many anyway, is finite. So, as demand for water rises inexorably, its supply is not quite expected to measure up. Whether Uganda will be in a position to provide the basic minimum of two litres of water that each person uses on a daily basis remains to be seen especially since its population will have billowed to 94m in 2050.

Industrialisation is expected to accompany the abovementioned population growth. The spin-off from the bouts of industrialisation will, however, be downrightly toxic as salination of water is forecasted to take centre-stage. The damage is already being done as I learnt on the visit to Ssese islands. While walking on the shores of Lake Victoria at Ssese, I couldn’t help but notice the disposal of sludgy and pasty wastes. It was a sheer glut, one engendered by pollutants from industrial, agricultural, and household waste.

The industries that discharge into the lake are, however, squarely to blame for the saline intrusion (or build up of salts) of its waters. Although the water quality of this lake that feeds the Nile river is largely acceptable, there are strong concerns that it could become a hotspot during Uganda’s next 50 years of self-rule. If it does blip on the radar as a hotspot, the water stability of the country could be jeopardised as desalination doesn’t come on the cheap.

Lamentably, Lake Victoria appears to be moving in that direction as industries that dot its shoreline continue to show no signs of moving offshore. Also, farmers continue to use a lot of the lake’s water for irrigation as the introduction of drought-resistant crop varieties by government has continued to be a figment of imagination. With the ‘more crop per drop’ biotechnology project struggling to make inroads in an increasingly water-scarce world, Uganda may have it all to do as it grapples with the pangs of drought and hunger.

The ramifications of a water-unsecure Uganda will also be felt in the energy sector where hydropower production will fall with the water levels. The brownouts that this dip in power production will churn will have a knock-on effect on Uganda’s growth. The country may be forced to look to its western neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), whose proposed Grand Inga dam could light up the region thanks to its dizzying 39,000MW hydropower output.

DRC will be in the box position on that front because it only shares the Congo river, which drops 96 metres at an average flow of 42,476 m³/s to form the beautiful backdrop that is the Inga Falls, with Congo-Brazzaville. Uganda doesn’t have such a luxury as it shares the Nile river with 10 other countries boasting of contrasting climates. This has indeed left the country muddled in the maze of the intricate hydropolitics oozed by the Nile basin.

Water conflicts in the Nile basin look set to be the order of the day during Uganda’s next 50 years of self-rule with East African states whining about Egypt and the two Sudans’ domination of the Nile river’s waters. The three nations use up to 90 per cent of the river’s waters, reasoning that unlike the others, theirs are water-scarce entities.

However, with climate change morphing the other East African states into quasi semi-arid areas, and population growth making the thirst for a drink insatiable, squabbles for a bigger share of the Nile waters are bound to become a mainstay in the Nile basin’s geopolitics. It promises to be such a thirsty road ahead as water turns into whine. Fasten your belts!

rmadoi@observer.ug