Driving Development in Africa: Water and Food

So far, this blog has focused on traditional methods of ensuring water and food security like irrigation schemes and groundwater extraction. However, there exist more abstract solutions, including virtual water, that may offer equally promising avenues. Put simply, virtual water measures the water that is 'lost' in the production of any commodity ( Allan, 1997 ). I isolate agricultural commodities due to their water-intensive nature - it requires 1000 cubic metres of water to produce a ton of grain ( Allan, 2003 ). Therefore, virtual water can be harnessed as another method of achieving water and food security. This view argues that the bluewater used in irrigation is an inefficient use of resources when these crops, at least highly water-intensive ones, can be imported from elsewhere ( Zeitoun et al., 2010 ). Whilst we've analysed issues of water and food scarcity on a strictly continental scale, this is a gross simplification of reality. Virtual water allows us to globali...

African nations have adopted a range of innovative solutions to control access to water resources in the face of challenging conditions discussed in this blog. Some have enjoyed more success than others. This post looks at South Africa's system of water permits and, crucially, its impact on the expansion of irrigated agriculture. The water permit system in South Africa is the legacy of colonial histories. Under Dutch rule from 1652 to 1810, water was seen as a public commodity. Between 1810 and 1925, British rulers replaced this with riparian law which favoured land owners. Therefore, water use was divided along racial lines by the end of the 19th century with most water allocated to the white population for commercial agriculture ( Tewari & Oumar, 2013 ). In response, the National Water Act (NWA) of 1998 attempted to balance between efficient use of water, equity and environmental issues, designating the state as the public trustee of the country's water resources. Through...

 I concluded my previous post by emphasising the importance of tackling power and control abuses by governments and institutions over communities. This is the first of two posts looking into specific instances of this. Water grabs are the extensive acquisition of land by companies or governments where water is implicitly or explicitly given away with the land. Foreign investors have acquired huge quantities of fertile agricultural land in African countries like Zambia ( Chu, 2012 ). There is conflict over the viability of large-scale investment in Zambia where the aggregate of land deals is equivalent to 12.92% of total arable land, increasing pressures on farmland ( Keane, 2011 ). The common narrative behind these deals is governments from 'finance-rich, resource-poor' nations are turning to 'finance-poor, resource-rich' countries to secure their own future food and energy requirements ( Borras & Franco, 2010: 508 ). However, these land grabs become water grabs as ...

Much of the Western literature is highly pessimistic of Africa's ability to ensure reliable food supply with climate change. Following lectures from weeks 4 and 5, I summarise competing arguments and aim to take a more constructive approach. Key to this post is understanding the projected impact of climate change on Africa's hydrological systems. As established in the previous post, hydrological disruption has significant (but not total) consequences for food supply. The principal impact of climate change in tropical areas is increased rainfall variability with more severe precipitation events and fewer moderate ones ( Fischer & Knutti, 2019 ). The effects of this, which I now summarise, are widespread. Episodic precipitation induces more variable soil moisture impairing crop yields. The graphs below compare a year of steady rainfall (1975) with one of episodic rainfall (1981) in Andhra Pradesh, India. Despite total rainfall being unchanged, crop yields were 34% lower in 19...

I’ve decided the best way to structure this first post is to discuss the reasons behind choosing my thematic area before providing some useful context. It presents an opportunity to build on my understanding of the complex relationship between water and food from my study of Human Ecology where the evolution of competing discourses within this space stood out to me. Naturally, this provides scope for nuanced critique to illustrate my own perspective through this blog. I now outline some of these competing arguments. Traditionally, the literature widely accepted that acute food shortages were brought about by food-availability decline (FAD) meaning a fall in aggregate food production ( Basu, 2010 ). This could result from fluctuations in physical variables, perhaps rainfall, or extreme geopolitical events. Regardless, this reduces the relationship between water and food to a linear one – water scarcity leads to a fall in aggregate food production which threatens food shortage. This logi...