Water and Food in Africa

                                         Source: (CRO,2017)                                       As I said in my first post Africa is diverse. This blog has attempted to show the potential of different approaches to irrigation, while acknowledging present and future challenges that Africa will face. This blog series has demonstrated to me the importance of location in relation to issues surrounding food and water in Africa. There is simply no quick and easy fix for improving irrigation in Africa. Future issues of climate change and increasing population/urbanisation will present more challenges that will only create increasing and more diverse needs. A final comment I'd like to make is that when I set out to write this blog series, my intention was to include academia from African ...

Climate It is widely considered that current global greenhouse emissions will lead to an increase in temperature.  The IPCC has projected that Africa will be disproportionately affected by climate change, with a rate of temperature increase 1.5x the world mean (IPCC,2012) .  Current projections see Africa's temperature increasing by up to 4°C by 2100 (IPCC,2012) .  This will undoubtably affect rainfall in this region.  It is expected that periods of heavy rainfall will increase, while medium and low rainfall events will decrease.  This is due to the Classius Clapeyron relain, which states as temperature increases, the amount of water that can be stored in air exponentially increases   (Allan,2009) .  Thus, increasing temperatures in Africa will lead to increased periods of extreme rainfall.  This intensification of rainfall will be particularly pronounced in the tropics, due to higher levels of humidity as a result of ENSO flows   (IPCC,2012)...

World Bank Promotion of FLD Source: (World Bank,2019) Farmer led irrigation development (FLID) puts farmers into central positions in improving their use of water in  agriculture  through changes in ‘knowledge production, technology use, investment patterns and market linkages, and the governance of land and water’ (Woodhouse,2017,216) .  FLID borrows many principles from community management strategies, however, it can be attributed to individual and combined farming efforts.  A recent study by Nkoka (2014) looked at ‘profitable expansion potential’ for irrigation projects in Africa’, finding that smaller projects lead to higher profits than large scale projects and a greater rate of return on investments. Over 90% of Africa’s farms are small subsistence farms, and it seems  an oversight by many policy makers not to realise the potential of FLID.  Three Examples of Farmer Led Irrigation: Furrow irrigation in Mountainous areas Furrow irrigation involv...