Water and Food: African realities

Global climate change influences freshwater availability and demand in Africa. This short entry briefly summarises the  African realities  of food systems as described in a  UNFCC report  prepared for Conference of Parties (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with author list featuring prominent African experts.       COP 27 sign; Source : Scientific American Cry me a river - would water solve all problems? The report critiques the preoccupation with food production, as has also been my own focus in this blog, and calls for close consideration of other aspects of food security such as storage, processing, distribution and consumption. Rapid population growth and increasing urbanisation across the continent will also have collateral impacts on water in food systems and hence food security.  The previous entry already outlines the nexus of climate change, water, and food production, largely citing this report.  What do Africans think they need in this predicament in terms of ‘adaptive c

' Water is both an indispensable input and a key constraint ' .   As illustrated in previous entries, the current water condition in Africa, as it pertains to food production, needs more efficacy in water management, and increasingly so, due to climate change effects on hydrology. Expansion of irrigation, particularly groundwater, could be an effective adaptive strategy for the growing population. However, inherent hydrological inequalities pose great challenges and droughts threaten rain-fed livelihoods where potential for irrigation is limited. There exist methods of enhancing rain- fed productivity but they employ temporally and water quality sensitive approaches which are difficult to maintain.          (top)  Farming in Western Sahara; Source : Getty Images; (bottom) half-moon dam/swales in a field, used to save water during rainfall, Burkina Faso; Source : FAO. What’s the matter (and why does it matter)? Drylands of tropical Africa contain 50% of the region’s population,

Anthropogenic climate change exacerbates an unequal range of hydrological variability worldwide. It is difficult to declare with certainty how rainfall patterns (how much, when, and where) will look under any given climate change scenario. An element that scientists can agree on is that since the 1960s precipitation globally is becoming more intense but more temporally sparse ( Myhre, et al., 2019 ). This variability is quantified and discussed in terms of ‘coefficient of variation’ which tells us within how many percent above or below the mean annual rainfall an area can expect to receive. As an illustrative example, in the UK the median figure is between 5-20%, globally, 31%, while in Africa it is 82%  ( McMahon et al, 2007 ).              Sprinkler irrigation in Ghana;  Source : CGIAR Location, location, location… Tropical Africa as a climatic region and a population, is inherently disproportionately impacted by the changes to rainfall. More sporadic precipitation leads to more dryi

Globally, around 70% (and up to 95% in some developing countries) of freshwater withdrawals are used for the purpose of agriculture ( FAO, 2017 ) – the chief driver of water stress. Studies show that 57% of global freshwater use for crop production is unsustainable ( Mekonnen and Hoekstra, 2020 ). This highlights the significance of employing appropriate methods of irrigation to sustain efficacy of food production during periods of hydrological variability. Countries of tropical (broadly sub-Saharan) Africa, reportedly, irrigate only around 5% of cropland, predominantly on a small scale basis. This is due to dependence on rain-fed agriculture ( Xie et al., 2021 ). Rainfall is plentiful in tropical Africa, particularly in the ITCZ, but climate change makes the rainfall patterns erratic and leaves those regions vulnerable to drought.             (top and bottom image) Entoto Hill, Ethiopia. Source : Trip.com  There exist risk-averse strategies for rain-fed agriculture which focus on pra

Food production is intrinsically linked to water – when agricultural water supply or access dwindle, or dip suddenly, food security follows the trend soon after ( World Bank, 2020 ).  Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, focusing on expanding global food security, has brought about intensive initiatives, which demonstrate the critical need for irrigation for food production globally. Agriculture across Africa is dominated by smallholder farmers, which make up some 60% of Sub-Saharan population and even more in other regions. Implementing SDG2 will require as much as 65 billion dollars in irrigation alone ( Goedde et al., 2019 ).              Colocynth fruit growing in the Sahara;  Source : Britannica.  African realities  will draw on case studies from across the nations of the continent and report the figurative good, the bad and the ugly of water, as it pertains to food production. Africa is well suited for exploration of this topic, spanning a wide range of climatic conditions, fro