Water and Food in Africa

The issues of using groundwater  There is much uncertainty behind groundwater use and questions of how sustainable the resource is. Taylor et al (2009) mention that there is a large range in the fraction of renewable freshwater resources in Africa that occur as groundwater, from 15% to 51%. Furthermore, the recharge of groundwater mentioned in the previous blog post is dependent upon uncertain events. It is hard to predict the behaviour of ENSO and associated teleconnections (Taylor et al, 2013) . Modelling finds the ENSO response to global warming differs strongly from model to model, thus is highly uncertain. Some models simulate an increase in ENSO amplitude, others show a decrease and others virtually no change (Latif & Keenlyside, 2008) . Such uncertainty shows the unsuitability of the use of groundwater to tackle food insecurity as this requires consistency and reliability.    The case of Cotonou in Benin, west Africa Another issue facing the use of groundwater...

The potential of groundwater Groundwater has received much recent attention due its potential to meet the increasing demand for water, particularly for those who do not have surface waters nearby. Whilst Asia has a long tradition of groundwater use for agriculture (30% of rural households in China and 50% in India may be using groundwater for crop production) (Giordano, 2006) , could Africa also divert towards this? Comparatively, only 1.5% of rural households in Africa use groundwater for crop production, so evidently figures show that Africa has missed this ‘groundwater revolution’.  Groundwater is of drinkable quality, thus does not need excessive or expensive treatment, and when in demand allows scaled development with infrastructure that is of lower cost compared to surface water infrastructure (Taylor et al, 2009) . Groundwater is a way to take advantage of the changes induced by climate change, such as the increased variability of surface water resources and soil moisture. E...

 Hello! Welcome to my blog on water and food in Africa. Over the next few weeks, I will be updating this blog on the potential ways that the water and food shortage in Africa can be addressed.  What is water scarcity?  There are multiple indicators used to define water scarcity, though they tend to make generalisations and omit important details.  Falkenmark (1989)  outlines water scarcity using the water stress index (WSI). This states that a country becomes water stressed when there is less than 1,700m3 of renewable water available per capita per year. The WSI relies on mean annual river runoff (MARR) as a measure of renewable water which conceals variations in intra and inter annual freshwater availability and fails to include greenwater. It also assumes that there is a relationship between access to safe water and per capita freshwater availability. Figure 1 shows that there is no statistically significant relationship between the two; Egypt and Morocco appe...