The border of Lake Malawi, which is potentially rich in oil and gas, is a subject of conflict between Malawi and Tanzania. Malawi has formally protested to the international community including United Nations (UN), the nation’s government confirmed. Malawi disputes Tanzania’s claim to half the lake–Africa’s third largest. The neighbours have clashed over their border since independence and reports that the lake had vast oil and gas reserves has reignited the ongoing dispute over the boundaries on Lake Malawi.
Tanzania is promoting a new map showing that the East African country owns part of the Lake Malawi and the border runs down the middle of the lake while Malawi’s argument, is all the waters between Malawi and Tanzania are theirs. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has advised the international community to disregard the said map and recognise the one that shows Malawi as owning the whole northern half of Lake Malawi. They have awarded oil exploration licences to international firms such as Hamra Oil of United Arab Emirates to search for oil in the lake, which Tanzania calls Lake Nyasa.
Malawi’s Chief Secretary, George Mkondiwa, has advised the officials to disregard the “half-truths” of Tanzania by rejecting the use of any document bearing such misinformation.
“Malawi will never, and has never, at any time, acquiesced to Tanzania’s unwarranted and unjustified territorial claims,” Mkondiwa said.
Malawi’s claim is based on an 1890 treaty between Germany and the United Kingdom. After Tanganyika came under British control after World War I, Lake Malawi was administered from the Malawian side by British authorities. In 2012, Malawi’s President Joyce Banda asked the African Union to intervene in the country’s border dispute with Tanzania. After Malawi withdrew from the talks with Tanzania, Mrs Banda said she would refer the dispute to the International Court of Justice for a ruling. Malawi accused Tanzania of raising tension by allegedly intimidating Malawian fishermen on the lake.
The first border dispute was in 1967, but when Surestream started exploration activities on the lake in 2012, this current dispute was reignited. Joaquim Chissano, former president of Mozambique, which also shares part Lake Malawi tried to mediate the dispute but these talks toppled in disagreement over basic legal issues in the first half of 2014. Chissano tried to bring both countries to a compromise, whereby they (the countries) would agree to share the lake and try to tackle border delimitation at a later stage but since then there has been no substantial progress on the issue.
In Africa, boundary disputes and contested territories abound and the African Union (AU) has been committed to an audacious border programme since 2007. The declaration demands an Africa-wide exercise to demarcate international land and maritime boundaries. The complete delimitation and demarcation of Africa is a herculean task because it entails an area of approximately 6.1 million square km and 28,000 miles of international boundaries.
From Malawi’s perspective, it is right to assert its sovereignty over the lake’s eastern shoreline. By virtue of the treaty, customary international law dictates that the default legal position is that the border of Malawi runs along the north-eastern shoreline of the lake and is, in its entirety, under the sovereign control of Malawi. Although the Tanzanian authorities insist that the only logical way to resolve the Lake Nyasa border crisis between the East African country and Malawi is to put the border on the median line.
According to a 1964 US-based study, “the Government in Dar es Salaam accepted, both before and immediately after independence, that no part of the lake fell within its jurisdiction.” In 1960, one year before becoming president (1961–1985) of his pre- and then post-independent country, Julius Nyerere stated in the Tanganyika Legislative Council (TLC): “We know that not a drop of the water of Lake Nyasa belongs to Tanganyika under the terms of the agreement so that in actual fact, we would be asking a neighbouring Government… to change the boundary in favour of Tanganyika.”
It had been known as Lake Nyasa before Malawi changed its name to Lake Malawi in 1967 when first dispute began when the Tanzanian government formally questioned the border, since the third-party mediation has failed and the disputants has decided to submit the case to the UN – International Court of Justice (ICJ), the colonial treaty that delimited the border between the two territories is likely to prevail; thereby upholding Malawi’s position on the lake border on the basis of the principle of uti possidetis.
But what Tanzania could do instead of its territorial claim, is pursue a policy that tries to successfully work around the border dispute with a view to both nations benefiting from the petroleum reserves suspected to be contained in the lake, potentially “limit(ing) friction between the two countries” for example by establishing a petroleum Joint Development Zone with Malawi to jointly extract and mutually benefit from the resource, and without prejudice to the territory’s rightful ownership/delimitation. This would be in line with customary international law norms of co-operation, and OAU/AU norms of African solidarity and mutually-supportive, economic development.
