Water and Food in Africa

For this blog, I want to take a quick break from talking about contemporary water and agricultural issues in Africa, as water is also fundamental for sanitation and health. Here I will discuss a recent change in UK legislation which upset and drove me to research the impact it will have on Africa's WaSH sector. This month as part of  the annual spending review, the UK government has reduced its aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income  (GNI) . The news of overseas aid being cut by a third frustrated many and even led to the Foreign Office minister, Baroness Sugg,  resigning . After hearing this news, I was shocked that during a global pandemic the government has decided to reduce aid spending which could be utilised to help provide much-needed basic handwashing facilities that 3 billion people worldwide lack to help mitigate against the spread of COVID-19  (UN, 2020) . Official Development Assistance (ODA) can be given as bilateral aid where direct a...

For this week’s blog I discuss how implementing agroforestry across Africa could  alleviate  many issues the agricultural sector faces.  Globally, conventional agriculture is highly reliant on synthetic fertilisers. This is a practice increasingly espoused as the ‘best’ solution to increase yields across Africa. Undeniably, the use of synthetic fertilizer has greatly increased agricultural production over the past century, but that has come with a serious cost to the environment. This made me question if there are alternative practices that could minimise the environmental damage of conventional agriculture and improve Africa’s food security? Practices which are not reliant on techno-scientific fixes, such as GMOs or synthetic fertilizers (which already price out most smallholder farmers)? Agroforestry practices may be the answer I am looking for! What is agroforestry and how does it work? Simply put, the  World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)  defines ...

In this blog post I discuss the potential use and challenges of genetically modified crops (GMOs), with a focus on drought-tolerant varieties. With the agricultural industry being the world’s largest consumer of freshwater (~70% of global freshwater use) and demand projected to increase by 60% over the next 5 years, it is now more important than ever that water conservation practices and policies are implemented across all agriculture spaces ( Boretti and Rosa, 2019 ). This need is exacerbated by the rising threat of extreme weather events and shifts in climatic patterns. In consequence, droughts across Africa have become more frequent, intense and widespread over the last 50 years and are likely to worsen in the future  (Masih et al., 2014) . This will inevitably have a widespread impact on agriculture with over 95% of farms in sub-Saharan Africa relying on rain-fed agriculture. Drought conditions in 2010 and 2011 led to a decrease in cereal production and si...