Water and Food in Africa

Sadly, this will be my last post. Here I reflect on my blogging journey and acknowledge other issues of water management I did not manage to discuss. Despite the various situated and growing challenges, from the outset I wanted to use my blog to showcase the ways smallholder farmers across Africa are mitigating against the hegemonic influence of conventional agriculture, climate change, the lack of irrigation infrastructure, and soil degradation. I have highlighted a range of solutions, from techno-scientific responses such as GMOs , desalination and LNC , alternative agricultural practices such as Agroforestry to more creative ideas such as finding value in sanitation and agricultural waste . Through these themes, I have featured place-based examples from all across Africa – drawing from Egypt, Kenya, Niger, Madagascar, Somaliland and Zambia to illustrate that the successful potential of these responses. Moreover, I have tried to keep my blog in sync with ongoing events during the

This week I will discuss three different soil recovery techniques that African farmers can implement putting the data findings of the iSDAsoil map into practice. Investing in practices that improve soil quality will in turn increase the water productivity of crops and yields (Erkossa, 2010) . Liquid Nano Clay (LNC) Desertification vulnerability of Africa (Reich et al., 2001 ) Desert Control , have created an innovative technique of LNC, a compound mixture of clay and water, to regenerate degraded soil which have fallen victim to desertification. Desertification is major concern in Africa affecting 46% of the continent ( Reich et al., 2001 ). Using clay to improve soil fertility is not a new idea however conventional practices are labour-intensive and disrupts sequestered carbon and the subterrestrial ecosystems maintaining soil structure ( Govaerts et al., 2009 ). The consistency of LNC means it can be sprayed onto arid soils and percolate down the soil profile and bind to sand g

Recently I came across a  news article  about a new digital soil map of Africa which inspired me to do some online research and would love to share with you what I discovered for this week’s blog. The  iSDAsoil map   gives soil variable data at a ‘ farm-level’  30m resolution for all potential agricultural land across Africa.   This is the first time the soils of an entire continent have been studied at this level of detail.  The 30m resolution means smallholder farmers across Africa now have access to specific, field-level information.  iSDA claim  the maps increase in resolution from other previously available datasets also increases the accuracy of the data as it more closely reflects the real variation in soils on the ground instead of averaging over large areas. The maps were created using machine learning to predict soil properties for ~24 billion locations across Africa which were standardised using over 100,000 soil samples from 15 datasets across Africa. This was then combined

  In this blog I briefly discuss a story that caught my attention from Somaliland using desalination . I discuss the benefits of the project and whether it is a feasible response for African nations. The main drawback for the desalination of seawater is its high-cost and so is often regarded too costly for use in growing crops. However, Seawater Greenhouse is a start-up disputing this claim. The video below demonstrates how they use  pan and fan technology in Somaliland to create a cool humid microclimate inside greenhouses to grow a variety of crops including lettuces and tomatoes. The microclimate created reduces the water uptake of crops up to ten to one hundred-fold dependent on numerous variables. This project successfully utilises desalinated water for irrigation due to the reduced water uptake. Current small areas of irrigated land in Africa ( FAO, 2005 ) This project is particularly interesting as it is a potential way of increasing the viable agricultural land area in ar