Geopolitics, Energy and the Great African Lakes
►http://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/dark-side-of-natural-resources/other-articles-analysis-and-general-debate/51981-geopolitics-energy-and-the-great-african-lakes.html#800
By Shaantanu Shankar OpenDemocracy
October 10, 2012
Hydrocarbon exploration of the British Surestream Petroleum corporation in Laky Nyasa has flared up unresolved territorial disputes between Tanzania and Malawi. This has resulted in an escalation of diplomatic tension between the two countries. While Tanzania claims fifty percent of the lake, Malawi asserts full ownership of Lake Nyasa under the principles of the Heligoland-Zanzibar treaty signed in 1890 between the colonial powers. Because of the strategic location of Lake Nyasa in East Africa, the dispute could have broader geopolitical consequences for the region as a whole, which has been labeled an emerging hydrocarbon frontier in Africa.
The Berlin Conference on Africa held in 1884-1885 exemplified European colonial ‘divide and rule’ policies implemented in the non-industrial world, dictating the political future of the African continent. The conference, initiated by the German Chancellor Otto Bismarck and convened by Belgian King Leopold II, effectively cut the African continent into arbitrary pieces on the basis of colonial spheres of interest, allocating resources between the European powers. The geopolitical impact of these colonial divisions as an indirect source for regional conflict has been evident in the continent’s post-independence phase. Intrastate conflicts in Saharan Africa, the Congo Basin, the Gulf of Guinea and the African Great Lakes have been influenced by the entrenched colonial legacies left behind by the rule of the industrial powers.