"Africa Can Feed The World" : A Land of Promise or Economic Disaster ?

Hello! Hola! Jambo! Namaste! Ni Hao! Wherever you are reading from in the world I welcome you to my blog. My desire is to firstly introduce the ongoing water and food insecurity problems in Africa, understand what is causing and escalating the issue and try to impart my personal analysis of the situation and what can be done to eradicate perhaps the world’s biggest problem.  

As an economic geographer I would like to firstly look at the numbers. It’s simple. According to the World Hunger Organization, in 1991, 182 million people living in Africa were suffering from chronic undernourishment. 25 years later and 232 million people in Africa had the same extreme problem. As global populations are predicted to rise to near 10 billion by year 2050, something must be done about food production to rescue such a growing challenge.

Water affects everything. From our personal health to our basic income. From poverty to education. Throughout my blog I will be touching upon these issues but I will primarily focus on how water vulnerability affects agricultural yields hence food security in continental Africa. The issue is becoming more and more extreme. More people are suffering, more resources are depleting and more conflicts are arising as a greater number of regions become affected.

Africa’s water problem?

Many understand Africa’s water and food insecurity to stem from a shortage in the availability of fresh water relative to demand. This would not be an incorrect interpretation, however to really understand the African problem one must understand the differences between physical scarcity and economic scarcity.

Water stress exists when shortages occur due to a lack of available water. I.e. water availability is less than 1700m cubed per person per year (UN, 2006). This can be due to geographical or political reasons.

Here, it is evident to see that Africa is in fact one of the least water stressed areas in the world. This begs the question – why is Africa so thirsty?

It is down to economic scarcity which is when water is available but people cannot afford it either due to it being too expensive or technology not being used to extract it efficiently. This can be seen in Africa where over 1 billion people live but only 25% of available water is extracted due to severe poverty.

I hope this is the first lesson taken from my blog. Contrary to many beliefs portrayed by the western media, Africa is in fact not just a massive desert with zero resources, barren land and no hope. It is home to the longest river in the world, an abundance of freshwater sources and according to the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development “Africa can feed itself and it has the potential to feed the world”.

To this end, throughout my blog I will explore Africa’s lack of success in achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. I will share the increasingly prominent role of climate change as a hindrance to Africa’s agriculture and analyse such theories that “population growth and demand for water will have a bigger impact than climate change on the availability of freshwater” (Carter and Parker, 2009).

In future blog posts I will seek to use case studies along the Nile Basin to understand governance and conflict as a rising issue on the continent. Finally, can West Africa’s and South Asia’s recent achievement of improving food security exemplify a paradigm for continental success at eradicating water and food insecurities? Or as Taylor et al suggest, will a combination of the highest hydrological variability in the world and limited resources mean Africa faces an enormous double problem (Taylor et al, 2009)?

References

• ·       BBC (2006) Map details global water stress. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5269296.stm 
• ·       CARTER, R.C. and PARKER, A. (2009) ‘Climate change, population trends and groundwater in Africa’, Hydrological Sciences Journal
• ·       Reig, P. (2013) World’s 36 Most Water-Stressed Countries. Available at: http://www.wri.org/blog/2013/12/world%E2%80%99s-36-most-water-stressed-countries.
• ·       Taylor, R.G., 2004. Water Resources and development challenges in eastern and southern Africa . In: T. Bowyer-Bower and D. Potts (Eds.), East and Southern Africa . Regional Development Text, RGS-IBG Developing Areas Research Group, Addison-Wesley Longman (London), Chapter 7, pp. 198-228.
• ·       Tran, M. (2011) ‘Africa can feed the world’. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jul/27/africa-potential-to-feed-world.
• ·       UN (2006) Water Facts and Trends. Available at: http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Water_facts_and_trends.pdf.
• ·       World Health Organiation (2016) 2016 world hunger and poverty facts and statistics. Available at: http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/.