An Introduction to Water and Food in Africa: Student Edition

After having a group discussion in the lecture this week, I realize I’ve been focusing the attention of my blog on mostly Sub Saharan African countries and their connections to food and water. As I’ve just done a case study on a southeastern country in Africa, Mozambique, I will focus this week's attention on farming, agriculture, and water use in Northern Africa. I will follow this blog post with a case study on a Northern African country in order to balance my thoughts and deliver a more well-rounded image of food and water in Africa. Map showing the region of Northern Africa (Ethnologue) The first thing that caught my mind when reading about agriculture in Northern Africa, is that every paper mentioned semi-urban practices. One in particular mentioned feedlots (FAO) , “Livestock, mainly sheep and goats, are an important feature of many farming systems...from extensive pastoralism to feedlots in peri-urban agriculture,” this immediately shows a stark difference between Nor...

When thinking of water and food there is this central idea that this means water as a complement to growing food. What if we were to think about water providing the food in a sense? This is what led me to think about focusing this weeks blog on a case study of Mozambique. Situated on the southeastern coast of Africa right across from Madagascar, Mozambique has 2.800 km (FAO) of coastline. Thus, fisheries are important to Mozambique as well as agriculture. I first began thinking of Mozambique as a case study as my sister lives there, and secondly because I always want to learn more about this diverse country. Map of Mozambique (CIA World Factbook) As an introduction, Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1975 and suffered a 16-year civil war which ended in 1992 (FAO) that devastated the country, its economy and created divisions among its citizens. Mozambique with its location and climate is considered a tropical to subtropical country (CIA World Factbook) and relies most...

I had mentioned in my first blog the colonization of water in Africa in the 1900s. In this blog, I will be investigating what had happened with water in this time and how its repercussions are felt today. Colonization in Africa had many aspects to it, many people often focus on land. Land in Africa was taken from individuals' hands and then used as a profit mechanism for settlers. For example, today in South Africa there are land reforms happening to return the land to black South Africans (FinancialTimes) . However, evidently it was not the only land that was abused by colonizers but water too, freshwater to be exact. In fact, the practices that were used on the water in colonial times is hurting Africa's advancements (FinancialTimes) . Settlers home in Njoro, 1909 (oldafricamagazine)    As mentioned in my first blog, Africa was reliant on water permits. These permits were a system of owning water under the rules of the settlers. However, today these systems of perm...

There are certain things I know for sure about water and food in Africa at this point in my blog. The first being that even though we are producing enough food to feed the world, there are still about 212 million people on the African continent who are suffering from a lack of food (FAO) . This, in fact, leads us to know precisely that there is immense vulnerability throughout the continent which leads to increased conflicts and instability. From my previous blogs and lectures, we are also able to understand that the reason the African continent suffers from hunger, and say the European continent does not, is due to a lack of infrastructure and corruption. As the FAO puts it the African agriculture infrastructure tends to be “less capital and technology-intensive”. In this case, there is a pressing need for improvement, what is the solution to this, however? After further research, I found out that after independence and post-colonization most of Sub-Saharan Africa was “self-suffici...

I will start this week's blog post with a quote from my professor that he said in today’s lecture, “Water is intimately linked to food, if we don’t have a substantial amount of water then that means that your capacity to irrigate and secure your food supply is limited” (Richard Taylor). This quote seems reasonable to understand, and it is a phrase that is very comprehensible. Understanding this quote in relation to the African continent is where the complications begin. I will examine the geography of this immense continent as I am very interested in knowing where there are the greatest areas of irrigation and why, as well as the distribution of the food from these centers. In examining this continent it is essential to see that every area has a different landscape. Towards the east and south of Africa there exists high plateaus which create these raised platforms (Taylor, R) in these areas rainfall tends to be greater since higher altitudes experience more rainfall. On the othe...

In beginning a blog there are a series of thoughts that run through one's mind. How should I introduce the topic? Where do I want to focus my attention? Yet in beginning this blog I was immediately attracted to the theme of Water and Food in Africa. This is due to previous coursework taken at my home institution where I focused on climate change and agriculture and found it to be a topic I wanted to keep learning about. Now expanding this class theme into a coherent set of blogs is the next challenge! A woman watering a cabbage field in Sierra Leon (FAO) In some previous coursework such as Human Geography and Sustainability 101, I have researched water scarcity and its impacts on societies and regions of the world. When people start to mention water in Africa there is a clear connection made in which an image of famine or desertification of agricultural fields pops into our minds. I am determined to change this perspective not only for myself but for others who want to under...