Posts

Ancient Practices for a Greener Sahel

Image
We have examined Sahel’s water and food challenges: a semi-arid climate; rapid population growth; soil degradation due to land clearing and inadequate water management. In this final entry, we will explore how these challenges are dealt with by smallholder farmers on the ground. The Sahelian regrowth As discussed previously, the French colonists conducted massive land clearing to set up large-scale irrigation schemes, such as ‘Office du Niger’, degrading the soil, displacing locals and taking many’s livelihoods. Under these preconditions, Niger experienced a combination of severe droughts, exploding population in the 1970s ( Derrick, 1984 ). In the hope to tackle the food shortages that followed, farmers cleared more land to expand agriculture, degrading the soil even further.Neiro, a 40 years old farmer from Maradi, Niger, witnessed these events first-hand ( Höije and Welch, 2022 ). As a child, his garden was covered with abundant, lush vegetation, and crops were thriving. Fast forwar...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sahelian Paradox in the Niger River Basin

Image
While North Africa faces the depletion of its non-renewable groundwater resources, the Sahel, on the contrary, struggles with too much renewable groundwater. The paradox in Niamey, Niger Niger, like many semi-arid countries of the Sahel, experiences constant variations in precipitation. From the 1970s to the late 20th century, rainfall significantly reduced, and droughts became longer. At the same time, quite paradoxically, a constant increase in groundwater level was recorded (Leblanc et al., 2008 ). This phenomenon called ‘the Sahelian paradox’ is typical for southwestern Niger, where regular droughts and rapid population growth have driven up the demand for agricultural production ( Favreau et al., 2009 ). Extensive areas of land were cleared in the 1950s, which has led to extensive and long-term losses of vegetation cover in the savannah. Cultivated land reduced the amount of evapotranspiration, and in turn, increased Hortonian runoff. As a consequence, the groundwater table cli...
1 comment
Read more

Groundwater - North Africa's Blue Gold 2

Image
Following my previous post, we will now explore the causes of unsustainable groundwater use in North Africa, and some proposed solutions. Map of transboundary water aquifer between Morocco and Algeria and the location of boreholes ( Fanack Water, 2019 ) Key drivers Factors contributing to the unsustainable use of groundwater for irrigation can be briefly summarised into three categories. First is the ‘groundwater economy’ - the profit and production-driven use of groundwater for irrigation ( Lejars, Daoudi and Amichi, 2017 ). Public policies designed to use groundwater resources sustainably and equitably are often merely tokenisation than actual implementation ( Kuper, Amichi and Mayaux, 2017 ). Together with the emergence of private, ‘informal’ agricultural practices in the 1980s, meeting short-term production goals has been prioritised over sustainable resource use by both the state and individual users. Secondly, regional rivalries trigger unhealthy rates of abstraction. Spanning ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Groundwater - North Africa's Blue Gold 1

Image
At the recent 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries convened in pursuit of raising awareness and scaling up actions to address the climate emergency (UNFCCC, 2022) . Having had the chance to attend the conference in person, I am using this entry to reflect on my personal experiences and highlight issues within the North African agriculture sector. COP27 - new hopes for Water and Food? Being held in Egpyt, one of the aridest regions in Africa, climate adaptation naturally became a core topic at COP27. Water - a key aspect of adaptation - seemed to have benefited from this attention (GWP, 2019) . Although the topic is only briefly touched upon in the Koronivia Joint Programme (UNFCCC’s main programme on agriculture) water made it onto the final, overarching outcome, or formally, “ the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan ” as an independent agenda item. This is a major milestone from last year’s Glasgow Climate P...
1 comment
Read more

Smallholder Irrigation for a Greener Africa

Image
Smallholder farmers make up close to 70% of agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Most of the crops on these lands are rain-fed, hence their production is highly susceptible to variabilities in rainfall ( Koigi, 2022 ). As such, there is a huge potential to boost agricultural productivity through irrigation. For instance, farmers who are able to produce during dry seasons tend to earn substantially more (Jayne et al. 2016) . Construction plans are already underway to build new and expand existing irrigation systems, such as the Shire Valley Transformation Programme in Malawi and the Bura and Mwea in Kenya ( Merrey, 2020 ). These large-scale programmes are well-funded by institutions like the World Bank. However, is larger necessarily better? The Office du Niger Tragedy In 1932, the French colonisers established a canal irrigation system at the Niger River in Mali to scale up the cotton supply for their booming textile industry. Known as ‘Office du Niger’, it is one of t...
2 comments
Read more

The Essence of Food and Water in Africa

Image
My interest in water and food started when I was building a Global Youth Development Agenda on Water as a part of an initiative for the World Meteorological Organisation. While this experience increased my awareness of the complexity of water governance, I observed that food and water issues are often treated in isolation in governmental agendas, despite their inherent connection. Nearly 70% of the global freshwater is withdrawn for irrigation, and fertiliser runoff causes 78% of global freshwater eutrophication (Ritchie and Roser, 2020) .  COP27 will be hosted in Africa, a continent with the lowest per capita freshwater withdrawals and rates of food production ( Funk and Brown, 2009 ; Wada and Bierkens, 2014 ). As such, climate adaptation is at the centre of climate debates, where UN Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 6 - established to achieve ‘zero hunger’ and ‘clean water and sanitation for all' by 2030 respectively - are particularly prevalent. Hence, I wish to take a closer...
1 comment
Read more