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 availability. 

I agree with the common narrative that there is a need for an expansion of irrigated agriculture across the continent to achieve water and food security – as achieved historically in the West and during Asia’s Green Revolution from the 1960s.  However, by the help of Daño, I have learnt that Western intervention into development schemes is not always an act of pure philanthropy and is instead motivated by a broader post-colonial and neo-colonial agenda, as seen in the Shire Valley Project.  By no means are all development schemes advocated by the West evil or malicious, but they often manifest as top-down approaches, such as high-tech engineering schemes or virtual water trading, where local voices are often overlooked, leading to impracticalities, power imbalances and ultimately the failure of such schemes.  Instead, I advocate for development organisations to assist with bottom-up approaches, such as farmer-led irrigation.  One approach, as mentioned in an earlier post, could be to help set up an institutional framework.  This would work to increase communication and cooperation between various established small-hold farmers, whose access to water depends on each other’s usage, thus allowing for a coherent water management strategy for the effective and equitable supply of water.  Another bottom-up approach, already deployed by the World Bank, is the financing of small-hold farmers, enabling them to buy relatively cheap irrigation infrastructure, such as simple motorised pumps, which can be easily maintained, reducing future costs and increasing the sustainability of the irrigation scheme.  Whilst this blog has covered a lot of content, it is but a drop in the ocean with regards to water and development in Africa, largely due to the continent’s vast cultural and physical heterogeneities.  However, despite this vastness, I am optimistic about the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 6, if bottom-up approaches are employed, empowering African people, and truly alleviating poverty.