Water, Food and Development in Africa

Last week I focused on the traditional small-scale irrigation methods used by farmers. This week my blog will seek to explore how larger-scale methods have been adopted (perhaps not as successfully as first thought). Sub-Saharan Africa is heavily reliant on agriculture. It is an important employer, providing jobs to 60% of its residents and accounting for a total of 23% of the region's GDP.  Africa is unique in the sense that over 90% of its food production is dependent on rainfall.  This means that droughts here are likely to result in famines. As climate change becomes more extreme, the frequency and magnitude of such droughts in the tropics increases. Because of this, many NGOs and Western development agencies have pushed for the construction of large-scale irrigation techniques in a trend known as the 'New Green Revolution' The World Bank is one agency that has promoted this via neo-colonialist policies that tried to influence African development following independence...

Last week we examined Africa's groundwater potential and how this could ensure water and food security via non-renewable systems. This week the focus will be on smaller-scale renewable extraction methods. Farmer-led irrigation has historically allowed for groundwater usage to occur without depleting the source. This development can be defined as a way in which farmer's take on a more important role when improving their agricultural water usage. This is done via changes in technology use, investment patterns, governance of water and land, and knowledge production. These processes normally occur informally all-over sub-Saharan Africa. Due to the informality of these processes, most farmer-led irrigation is not included in the official figures stating how much of Africa's agriculture is irrigated. This figure is currently 6% , but if these methods were included, it would be significantly higher. I will discuss the different example of farmer-led irrigation below. Shallow Grou...

Groundwater development has proved integral in fuelling agricultural growth all over the Global South, most notably Asia.  As a result, groundwater in South Asia now supplies over half of the irrigation supplies. Unfortunately, Sub-Saharan Africa missed this Groundwater Revolution. However, recently there has been an increase in farmer-led irrigation methods utilising groundwater. This shows that perhaps the tide is turning. Thus, I will seek to show Africa's groundwater extraction potential and how this could help its agriculture. Figure 1: Map showing Africa's groundwater potential Africa sits upon a vast water reserve. Sub-Saharan Africa has such a large reserve that it is estimated it has over 3 times more groundwater availability per capita than China and almost 6 times more than India. This groundwater source is quantified as being roughly 0.66 million km ³.  To show the magnitude of this figure, lets compare it to these outputs below: - Average annual rainfall is estim...