Water and Food in Africa

Challenges in GWI: Saline Intrusion In this blog I want to focus on one of the most challenging areas of management for groundwater irrigation; coastal aquifer resource management. As we have previously discussed, groundwater is an incredibly important development resource in Africa, but this development has to be sustainable. In coastal East Africa, specifically coastal areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Comoros, there is a heavy reliance on large aquifers. An aquifer is a large underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, unconsolidated materials or rock fractures from which groundwater can be extracted.  The resource is theoretically infinite, however we will go on to discuss the fact that the availability of this resource is determined by societal factors, as well as by physical and environmental factors  ( Comte et al, 2016 ). The latter of which dictating the ultimate renewability of the resource. As previously discussed, aqu...

This week I will focus on the topic of groundwater irrigation or GWI. However, I will start by discussing the importance of irrigation for Africa. A report produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) discussed the importance and potential of irrigation in Africa. Eighty-five percent of the ‘poor’ people in Africa's live in rural areas, largely dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Only 6% of Africa’s agricultural land is irrigated, the vast majority therefore reliant on rainfall ( IFPRI, 2010 ). With such a vast proportion of the poor population reliant on agriculture, it seems the most obvious solution to reducing poverty is improving the agricultural sector. The only logical way to do this is to remove the greatest vulnerability: rain. Sustainable agricultural development will deliver poverty alleviation, economic growth and food security. Rainfall is categorically unreliable. The rainfall in semi-arid areas only lasts for...