Introduction: Food, Water and Human Rights

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.  Thus, much work remains to be done to ensure the universal provision of water and food. 

These shortfalls in the global provision of food and water have been recognised by the UN and attempts to rectify them have manifested themselves in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  These goals are the successor to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include targets to decrease the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and without access to safe drinking water by half, by 2015.  SDG2 aims to "end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture" and SDG6 aims to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all", both to be achieved by 2030. Although these SDGs may seem ambitious, the equivalent MDGs were attained to an extent.  The MDG related to water was achieved 5 years prior to its deadline and the proportion of undernourished people living in developing nations fell by almost half by 2015, suggesting that SDGs 2 and 6 are attainable.

UN Sustainable Development Goals logos

Source: United Nations

There is an undoubtable interdependence between water and food.  It is argued by Carruthers et al. (1997) that the single most effective way to alleviate poverty and achieve food security is to increase agricultural efficiency through the expansion and intensification of irrigated agriculture.  Currently, irrigation accounts for more than 70-80% of global freshwater withdrawals, reaching up to 90% in certain regions.  Thus, it does not make sense to separate issues of food security from issues of water scarcity, and hence, this blog will focus on the two together.

Why Africa?

The reason this blog is focussed on water and food in Africa is that despite progress made by the MDGs and SDGs, large regional disparities in development exist.  Hunger is on the rise in almost all African regions, with almost 20% of the continent suffering from undernourishment. A similar story exists for water - less than 50% of people in rural Africa have access to improved water sources at present and up to 250 million people will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030, according to Falkenmark's Water Stress Index (WSI).

As a result of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement - heightened in 2020 -and after reading Wainainer's article 'How to Write About Africa', I will be making a conscious effort to be critical of my own portrayal of Africa within this blog.  To do this, I will be taking a regional approach to discuss issues of water and food on the continent.  Hopefully, this will highlight the wide variety of lived experiences relating to water and food in Africa, thus helping to dismantle current narratives that portray Africa as a homogenous, sympathy-worthy continent.