Food and Water in Africa

     “The wars of this century have been on oil, and the wars of the next century will be on water...” ( Serageldin ) Food and water based conflict is predicted to overtake other resource based conflict over the next century, it has already been seen with Israel seizing the Golgi Heights in Syria in order to secure it's water supply. This issue is more prevalent than anywhere else in Africa, 60% of the African population lives in a transboundary river basin. The main issue behind water based conflict is assigning water property rights, Shiklomanov suggests that “... water resources are assumed to be the river runoff formed in the territory of a given region plus half the river water inflow from outside." - in essence this means very little as you have to rely on honesty and trust the data provided by nations upstream and in resource based conflict, honesty is often the first thing to go.  An area where this is particularly prevalent is in...

As stated in the previous blog, water is a resource in Africa that needs far more management, however, the question remains: how can water be better managed in Africa? In this post I aim to spli t water resource management into two categories: utilisation (of resource) and location - I feel this break down will best tackle what I consider to be huge injustices in Africa. The main focus of water resource management should, and is, seen as development as well as being a political and economic priority for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to better establish an improved management system there needs to be greater levels of water usage accountability, especially with shared limited resources such as transboundary aquifers. With increasing levels of usage and strain placed on groundwater resources in lieu of climate change it becomes imperative to properly manage these resources. At present the jurisdiction of water managmement in rural areas lies under the communities that depen...

Impact of crops on water resources – irrigation and the wests obsession with trying to improve it As per SDG 6, Food must be readily available to all. Within Sub Saharan Africa agricultural irrigation accounts for 70% of all groundwater usage, and as mentioned in the precious blog with population rising exponentially and rainfall forecast to become less predictable this figure is only likely to rise . Across the broader African continent, the agricultural industry employs 65% of  and accounts for 32% of the continent’s overall GDP . In addition to the reduced rainfall there will also be reduced soil moisture ( Taylor 2019 ), therefore there needs to not only be greater levels of irrigation but also of innovation. Over the years, Western scientists have attempted to intervene and improve the system employed by African subsistence farmers, however as Ayittey suggested, "African solutions [are perhaps better at solving] African problems", what Western civilisation so rea...