An introduction

Well I guess this is it, starting a blog. A day I personally never thought would come but as I said before – here we are. Before I delve into my reasons for writing this blog I’ll give you a bit of information about me: I’m a third year geography student at UCL, I’m 20 going on 40 with the back of an 80 year old, I gym a lot, eat a lot, and drink a lot (of water). 

So onto my reasons for writing this blog – after reading an article by Professor Richard Taylor about water and food in Africa I started to wonder how different my lifestyle would be had I been born on a different continent and how different my life would be full stop. From a geographical perspective I also find that exploring our (the Wests) imagined geographies of Africa of great interest – an area I hope to explore throughout my posts. Areas of particular interest to me that I intend to look into over the coming posts are; the accessibility of water in Africa; how Western technology hasn’t managed to revolutionise agriculture in Africa (tapping into those imagined geographies);  potential conflicts arising from resources - water flows and its impact on food production; and the implications of climate change on water scarcity and food production in Africa. I also intend to focus primarily on rural areas as I find this area to be of greater interest to me.

So here's a bit of background: The UN have created a set of "Sustainable Development Goals" - targets that will hopefully be met by 2030, they were bought into effect on the 1st of Janurary 2016 and replace the Millenium Goals. The two "SDGs" pertinent to this blog are SDG 6 "to achieve universal, equitable access to safe water, and sanitation for all"; and "to end hunger and ensure access to safe, nutritious and sufficent food for all", throughout this blog keep these goals in the back of your mind as they are the driving force behind most projects.

To start this series of blogs I feel that it would perhaps be a good idea to provide some key facts and statistics as well as to provide a few definitions of key terms that will crop up within this blog. At this point my knowledge on the topic area is limited but I look forward to expanding it with each blog post, and of course sharing that knowledge with you.

-        - Africa’s has an exponentially growing population is projected to hit 2.4 billion come the year 2050.

-     -At present over 70% of groundwater withdrawals in Africa are used for land irrigation.

      - The average African household water use is 47 litres - around 15% of that used in the UK- this figure is lower in rural areas where water may not be immediately accessible .

     - 783 million people in Sub Saharan Africa have no access to clean drinking water.

    - The average distance walked to get water is 3.7miles, often carried out by women and children - the majority of this water is not safe drinking water.

 

      Water Scarcity is defined as: a lack of sufficent available water to meet the demands of water usage within a region, often called water security.

      Predictably, food scarcity is defined as: a lack of sufficent available food to meet the demands of a region 65, often referred to as food security.
    
     

     I reckon that's enough till next time.