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Pulling the Plug: final thoughts and reflections

In writing this blog I have learnt about issues of water scarcity and food insecurity in Africa.  Not only this, but I have also learnt about Africa’s deep-rooted, complex and place-specific colonial histories that act to complicate these contemporary issues, helping me to develop a critical understanding of the issues, and indeed towards many of the proposed development ‘interventions’.  As well as these spatially specific historical nuances, I have learnt that the African continent is vastly heterogenous in its physical setting - from fossil aquifers under the Sahara Desert, to monsoonal climates in West Africa and the large variation in biomes across the continent. I have learnt that issues of water scarcity and food insecurity are often a result of a combination of both Africa’s heterogenous, and thus place-specific, physical and non-physical factors, whereby access to water, and thus food, is as much governed by Africa’s wide-ranging socioeconomic capacities as it is by freshwater
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Virtual water: in practice or theory?

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Virtual water in theory Oki et al. (2017) highlight that, in the case of water, areas of high demand do not necessarily align with areas of natural supply – much like many other resources. To combat this, other resources are commonly traded from areas of high resource availability to areas of low resource ability.  In the context of water, they go on to explain how the trade of ‘real water’ – water in its natural liquid state – is not economically feasible due to the high costs of storage and transportation relative to the real value of water.  Therefore, water needs to be traded by virtually; they define ‘virtual water trade’ as: “the international trade in water-intensive commodities between water abundant countries and water-poor countries…”, which they estimate to occur on the scale of 1100-2300km3 per year.  Put simply, instead of trading actual water, water can be traded virtually, embedded within high-water goods, therefore reducing the demand in the water-poor destination coun
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Sitting on a mine

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Africa’s groundwater potential, from MacDonald et al. (2012) As discussed last week, some of the most proliferating farmer-led irrigation techniques involve groundwater as a source for water abstraction, therefore I wanted to investigate Africa’s groundwater potential in this week’s post. MacDonald et al. (2012) estimate that much of Africa is sitting on top of a goldmine – a goldmine consisting of around 0.66 million km3 of water.  To put this into perspective: - Average annual in Africa is estimated to be 0.02 million km3, - Total lake water storage is estimated to be 0.03 million km3, - Total renewable freshwater resources are estimated to be 0.004 million km3, Thus, the estimated volume of Africa’s groundwater is more than 12 times a great as its annual rainfall, lake water storage and renewable freshwater resources combined.  In addition to this, Damkjaer and Taylor (2017) explain that common water scarcity metrics, such as the water stress index (WSI), withdrawal-to-avail
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Farmer-led Irrigation – Alternative Saviours.

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Woodhouse et al. (2017) defined farmer-led irrigation development as “a process where farmers assume a driving role in improving their water use for agriculture by bringing about changes in knowledge production, technology use, investment patterns and market linkages, and the governance of land and water.”  Such schemes are known to occur informally – and en masse – throughout sub-Saharan Africa, many of which not contributing to Africa’s official percentage of irrigated agriculture (6%) – this post will cover a few examples. Furrow Irrigation, from Averbeke et al. (2011) Furrow Irrigation One example of farmer-led irrigation occurs in East and Southern Africa, where water is diverted from permanent mountain streams and springs, through large systems of interlinked hand-dug furrows, allowing for irrigation.  In South Africa, as Smit and Jacobs (2004) explain, native South Africans could only access irrigation through the use of hand-dug furrows, as opposed to the ‘modernised’ irrigat
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Irrigation: Our (white) Saviour(s)?

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    According to McKinsey & Co ., the agricultural industry in ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ accounts for 23% of its GDP and employs 60% of its population.  You et al. (2010) explain that unlike other regions in the world, 94% of food production in Africa depends on rainfed agriculture, leaving the region especially vulnerable to drought induced famine.  Touma et al. (2015) found that the climate change will increase the occurrence, duration and extent of drought in subtropical and tropical regions.  Therefore, as the majority of the African continent is located within the subtropics and tropics, the majority of the continent is at increased risk of drought and famine as a result of climate change.  This has created a push for a ‘New Green Revolution’ in Africa from many non-governmental developmental organisations, such as the World Bank.   Irrigation is an agricultural practice that involves the artificial application of water onto cultivated land, thus removing the dependence on in-situ
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Africa: Embracing Complexity

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As highlighted in the previous blog, Africa is often oversimplified into one homogenous region.   However, this is not the case.  Africa is a complex continent consisting of 54 countries with varying climates, and histories.  Damkjaer and Taylor (2017) define water scarcity as freshwater availability relative to demand, where availability depends upon place-specific climate, hydrology and abstraction capacity, and demand largely depends upon population size, agricultural and industrial needs of a specific place.  As these factors vary across the continent, so do the experiences surrounding issues of water scarcity and consequent food insecurity.  Therefore, in order to achieve the effective development of water and food resources across the continent, infrastructure needs to be place-specific – matching its surrounding climates, cultures and water requirements.  In this post, I will explore some of these intracontinental nuances, by discussing Africa’s heterogenous climate and its comp
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Introduction: Food, Water and Human Rights

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Hello and welcome to my blog! This blog will be exploring some of the issues related to water, food and development in a variety of African countries. Photograph of growing crops (background) and  dry   ground (foreground) source:  Judd McCullum Why water and food? Other than oxygen, both water and food are undeniably two fo the most essential building blocks for human life.  Perhaps this is why access to water and food are recognised as basic human rights by the United Nations (UN).  Food is expressed as a basic human right under Article 25 of the  UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and although water is not explicitly mentioned in the UDHR, "Access to water and sanitation are recognised  by the UN as a human right".  However, despite their human rights status, over 10% of the global population lack access to adequate food and water;  785 million people  lacked access to a basic drinking water service in 2017 and  820 million people  were still hungry in 2018.
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