Harmony or Disharmony? Contesting Narratives of OMVS’s Success

Over the past few weeks, I encountered contesting narratives surrounding the holistic success of the OMVS in bringing transboundary harmony. Some view OMVS’s unique approach optimistically, while others criticise what they perceive as a mere facade of success. Today, I will navigate these narratives and academic debates surrounding OMVS’s role in transboundary cooperation.

Narratives of Harmony and Success

The World Bank and the African Development Bank Group, major contributors to OMVS projects, continuously and unsurprisingly portray OMVS as a triumph story – framing the organisation as a major political success in regional integration and highlighting its possibilities for tackling poverty in the basin (see also Figure 1).

Figure 1. Positive media portrayals of the OMVS include a World Bank Blog article and a Malian press article (Author, 2023)

Alam (2012) and Vick (2006) argue that despite some institutional flaws, OMVS’s management of the transboundary basin is still rather successful, highlighting their approach to basin-wide sovereignty as a progressive principle in transboundary river management. This perspective aligns with scholars like Snyder (1967) and Vatn (2007), who also argue that voluntary relinquishment of each country’s sovereignty results in multinational benefits and enables regional cooperation despite ongoing enmities. The United Nations endorses this view, reflecting that negotiations and collaboration between the four countries have continued even during times of intra-basin conflicts.

Narratives of Disharmony and Conflict

However, beneath the predominant framing of regional success and harmony, others highlight the conflicts that were induced by the OMVS’s actions. The construction of two major dams by the OMVS disrupted the balance between herders and farmers by opening new parts of the valley to irrigation, which catalysed and exacerbated the 1989 Mauritania–Senegal Conflict (Parker, 1991). The initial dispute between Mauritanian herders and Senegalese farmers that resulted in two fatalities, fuelled a series of ethnic clashes. In Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, hundreds of black people were killed, leading 70,000 flood-recession farmers to flee from the Mauritanian side of the river to Senegal (Degeorges and Reill, 2006), many of whom are still refugees to this day (see video below).

Twenty-five years after the 1989 Mauritania–Senegal Conflict, many Mauritanian refugees remain hesitant to return home

In the 1990s, local farmers and fisherfolk began to contest the top-down river management approach of OMVS (Adams, 2006). Jaabé So and Adrian Adams became prominent figures leading protests against the bureaucracies within the OMVS, depicting the situation in the Senegal River basin as a “tragedy in the making” (Padt and Sanchez, 2013). With the absence of formalised legal status of the Local Council Committees (see previous post), the conflict of interest between the OMVS, national governments, and local citizens has also remained extremely skewed (Fall et al., 2007).

As we navigate through these narratives of optimism, success, conflict, and protest, the role of the OMVS emerges as a controversial one. These contestations surrounding the success of transboundary cooperation invite us to critically evaluate the OMVS through diverse lenses and stakeholders.