Water and Food in Africa

 Irrigation has long been proved to be beneficial to agricultural activities. By bringing water to the crops through pipes and sprinkles, farmers do not need to rely on natural rainfall alone. This is particularly useful in areas with seasonal or irregular precipitation. Irrigation increases agricultural productivity and improve crop growth and yield. It also helps lengthen the growing season by enabling cultivation in dry seasons, which a provides a more reliable food supply and hence enhancing food security (National Geographic, 2022) . This is especially important in the coming years as the threat of climate change will create more extreme weather events and erratic rainfall patterns, thus leading to more crop failures and disrupting the food systems. Irrigation is therefore seen as a silver bullet to increase resilience to the impacts of climate change (Finger et al. 2011) . Agriculture is unarguably the powerhouse for Africa’s socio-economic development as it contributes to an...

In recent years, there have been increasing voices of the use of groundwater as a solution to Africa’s water scarcity crisis. Some argue that a better management of groundwater could change the agriculture industry and power economic development of Africa (The Guardian, 2022) .  But is this all true? Are there any concerns associated with groundwater usage? Groundwater refers to water that is found underground in between fractures of soil and rock. It is a part of the natural water cycle that is recharged through infiltration. Undeniably, Africa has abundant groundwater resources, totalling 0.66 million k m³   (Xu et al. 2019) . The map below shows the 13 major groundwater aquifers in Africa.  Many studies therefore urge that the continent should make better use of this hidden resources, such as extracting it for crop production. The United Nation’s World Water Development Report pointed out that only 5% of farmland in sub-Saharan African uses groundwater for agriculture,...