Water and Food in Africa

 As outlined in my introductory post last week, water is a critical resource that is needed to facilitate agricultural production. However, there are significant environmental challenges facing African nations (and the rest of the world) in sustainably meeting its food and water needs, with 4 billion people globally facing severe water scarcity for at least a month each year ( Mekonnen, 2016 ).  As many countries see rapid urbanisation and a resulting increased, concentrated demand for food supplies, intensive irrigated agriculture is often seen as a necessary alternative to small-scale subsistence farming. This post will explore the environmental challenges and opportunities in sustainable agriculture through the lens of Dr. Mesfin Mekonnen's work on sustainable agriculture in Kenya. Figure 1: Irrigated farmland in Nigeria showing intensification of agriculture Source: The Business Post With access to only 9% of global freshwater resources (Gaye, 2018) , Africa, and pa...

  Introduction: Welcome to my blog on Water and Food in Africa! Over the next several weeks, I will be exploring how water, as an essential resource to sustaining human life, is being managed and developed in relation to food provision in Africa. I hope to provide a critical perspective on the various challenges and opportunities in meeting water and food security needs, through the use of specific local and national level case studies. Figure 1: The UN’s Millennium Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) to be achieved globally by 2030 Source: The United Nations Contextualising Water and Food in Africa: Africa as a continent has the lowest proportion of access to safe drinking water and the lowest rates of food production, due to 80-90% of agricultural activity being self-subsistence, rain-fed agriculture. In addition, climate change is increasing the inter-annual variability of rainfall, with fewer but more extreme precipitation events ( Allan et al. 2010 ), throughout th...