Water, Food and Everything in Between

For the final blog post, I wanted to look back on all of the topics that have been touched upon in this blog series. I want to briefly discuss each topic and then talk about how they interconnect with each other.

The first topic that I covered in the blog was irrigation. I specifically looked at ground water irrigation (GWI), discussing how it could be the perfect solution. GWI provides a more reliable integrated form of irrigation, however, due to the hidden nature of the resource it has to be managed efficiently. GWI can provide perfect solutions to everyone from large scale commercial farms to smallholder farmers, but it does not come without challenges. 

Investigating the topic of groundwater irrigation further, a discussion into aquifers and one of the most threatening pressures to GWI was initiated. The third and fourth blog posts both covered some of the potential drawbacks of aquifers or groundwater in coastal regions. Saline intrusion can cause long term damage to the quality of drinking water and the fertility of soils. A lack of sustainable governance was the most common cause for this, providing our first major introduction to power dynamics surrounding food and water.

After spending my reading week in Morocco, I was able to focus the blog more closely into a specific location, researching case studies of groundwater irrigation, saline intrusion and governance. The time I spent in Morocco, which involved driving for a few hours from the inland region surrounding Marrakech to the coast, gave me an appreciation of the North West African landscape, with harsh, shallow and sandy soil. 

After focusing on GWI and the irrigation in agriculture, the blog moved on to look into the volumes of water that go into the production of food and other commodities. This is of course the concept of virtual water, the volume of water integrated into commodities that is required to produce goods. Whilst the concept is imaginative and enables the western world to re-examine our consumption in everyday life, the blog evaluated that virtual water is limited as a critical concept, and the idea of virtual water trade is not a tangible model. As discussed in the blog, virtual water does not reach far beyond a metaphor for consumption and an outlook into the exports and imports of a country. Virtual water as a topic did, however, introduce us to the flows of knowledge from the Global North to the Global South.

Finally, the blog examined the influence and ideas surrounding indigenous knowledge and Neo-colonialism. The blog post on indigenous knowledge discussed the immense awareness that local subsistence farmers have of their land and climate. The blog stressed how the ‘one size fits all’ approaches adopted by outside nations and NGOs is more often ineffective on grounds of both cost and efficiency. These final blogs all focused on the power dynamics that are created through aid and development programs, creating a modern form of ‘soft power’ or neo-colonialism.

Source: (Soil Atlas of Africa)

One map that demonstrates how varied Africa is.

Ultimately, I believe that despite the blog topics varying greatly, the critical messages that can be taken home remain the same. Each blog, from groundwater irrigation to development aid and the colonialism that centres around power dynamics. All of the issues presented exist with governance issues that span from the international scale down to the single subsistence farmer. I believe that indigenous knowledge, and the collaborative bottom up approaches that harness knowledge and shared power structures are the way that Africa with equitably develop.

I hope that the blog has helped break the discourse of an undeveloped and out of control Africa. The scope and knowledge within agriculture, even at the most small and rural scale, is worthy of recognition. Finally, Africa is an incredibly diverse continent that can’t be accurately contained and grouped under one description or term. Whilst Africa has been frequently been referred to as a singular term, it must be noted that trying to group the whole continent under one word is critically limited. This blog has given me an immense appreciation of this. 

Writing this blog has been a lot of fun, and it has allowed me to engage with literature that I might have otherwise never found. I hope the blog has contributed to the narrative and academic conversation of a number of topics. However, I also hope that it has created an accessible platform to learn from and develop an interest in a number of topics surrounding water and food in Africa. As always, thanks for reading!