Water can be life, livelihood – or a trigger for conflict. In this episode of Afri-CAN, we explore how rivers, wetlands and shared basins shape both survival and geopolitics in Africa.

Our guests are Edoardo Borgomeo, water management lecturer at the University of Cambridge and award-winning expert on water planning under climate change, and Deng Chol, one of the former “Lost Boys of Sudan”, now a doctoral researcher at Oxford studying the socio-hydrology of the Sudd wetlands.

Deng shares his powerful journey of walking over a thousand miles as a child and the story of a water system serving millions of people in South Sudan that almost became a pawn in regional power struggles. Together, he and Edoardo unpack how we can move from water as a source of tension to water as a platform for cooperation, combining diplomacy, science and ancient practices.

Listen to find out what it would take to build truly peaceful water agreements in Africa – and why the future of entire communities can depend on how we share a single river.