What are the solutions for Water and Food in Africa?

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-sufficient” (FAO) in terms of their food crops. As the years went by however the exports from the African continent dwindled and imports rose. Not only did imports rise, but food aid became a huge enterprise in Africa. From the figure attached, you can see that Africa's cereal production has been dwindling since the 1960s.

From the FAO, this chart shows how in 2001 crop yield is lower than in 1967

Therefore, I want to research how we can ensure that this decline stops and that the African continent can be built back up through its agriculture which does employ about 70% of its economy. Even though Africa has about 25% of all arable land on earth, its agricultural output is only 10% of the global total (Boston University). What this indicates is that Africa is in serious need of a Green Revolution. As we learned in lecture, the Green Revolution that happened in the Western Hemisphere in the 1960s never occurred in Africa. Today many researchers and scientists are saying that a Green Revolution in Africa would solve many of its issues. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with an alliance for better agriculture in Africa to propel this movement.

This video above is of Melinda Gates speaking about the need for increasing agriculture efficiency in Africa (CGTN Africa)

The need for water comes back however, Africa is still heavily dependent on season rainfall where some areas receive too little and others receive too much. This is why a green revolution would be a necessary solution as it could bring about better investments and infrastructure such as drip irrigation which I spoke of a bit in my first blog. The problem with this solution is that larger-scale farmers would benefit more as small scale farmers would not have the means to invest in technology such as drip irrigation which saves water and provides better crop yields (Boston University). This brings up the issue of climate justice, how are we supposed to solve one issue without bringing up another? Yet, many people say that this is a necessary evil in order to help Africa out of its hunger. Further research nonetheless shows that Africa is abundant in water resources, the problem is the distribution of these resources as the resources are spatially variable. To connect back to above, one solution to this issue is drip irrigation techniques which would save more water and use up less of it so the act of bringing water to someone is not as much. Another solution is to adopt and teach African farmers to use of non-tillage farming techniques which improve water efficiency and in the end create more crop yields (Boston University).

This photo shows a no-tillage plot of land which is a way of not disturbing the soil over the years as you plant. This is an environmental solution to increase productivity with less water

It is easy to see that the solutions in regards to water and food in Africa will be all about trade-offs. There is no one easy solution we can have in this situation. As explored by another article I read, the intensification of agriculture in regions of water stress can improve crop yields by about 30% (Pfister et al.). One may ask, how can we do this though because wouldn’t that ultimately result in more stress on water resources. This is true but this is the trade-off. There has to be investments made in order to make this work and there would be direct results. In another case, the solution would be to simply change the way agriculture has been done for years and create a new way of planting and growing in areas that are the most environmentally efficient (Pfister et al.) instead of where the demand is the greatest and where it is the cheapest to grow. In all cases, it is easy to see that there are no easy solutions, every solution comes with more problems and trade-offs but this is a grave issue that has everyone on guard.