Introduction

Introduction

What about food in Africa? What does water have to do about food in Africa? In short, near enough everything. The focus of this blog is to try to understand the relationship between water and food development in Africa. This extends far beyond the struggles of access to water and food, which are ubiquitous on this planet but seem disproportionately concentrated in Africa.  

A Moment of Reflection

Figure One: Ed Sheeran (singer) visits an African Village 
(EdSheeran.com, 2017)

Before divulging any issues in detail, it is important to first pause and clarify my own position as a blog writer. “Africa” covers almost twelve million square kilometres between its longitudinal poles of Al-Ghīrān Point in the North and Cape Agulhas in the South (Robert K.A. Gardiner and John F.M. Middleton, 2018). Between them lies fifty-six countries, thousands of languages and a sundry of lives each uniquely shaped through distinctive experiences of geographical, political, and social forces. For a large part of history, this diversity has been continually homogenised through western media (Wainaina, 2018). Through channels such as Red Nose Day (Figure 1) appeals, showing harrowing images of destitute villages with starving children (Wainaina, 2018), an unjust discourse of the African continent undeniably exists.

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others” (Conrad, 2007)

The subtitle above is a quote taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and for me, it perfectly summarises the historic context of the prevalent power-dynamic between the global North and the Global South. The impact of colonialism is still felt in Africa today. When European Imperialists arrived and began drawing straight lines in an alien land, Africans became prisoners to a foreign idea of Geography that did not match the reality of their demographics (Marshall, 2016). The fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo witnessed today (Africa News, 2022) can be justifiably attributed to colonial state formation, which grouped together independent and warring ethnic groups under one flag overnight (Wong, 2012), shackling them to a future of bloody violence.

French caricature (from 1885):
German chancellorBismarck divides the
African continent among the colonial powers
(DW.com, 2015)

Before the “scramble for Africa” and the implementation of unjust borders, African economies were growing in every area, until European powers stunted this natural development through the imposition of their commodity-based trading system (Settles, 1996). Of particular importance for food development, was the imposition of cash-crop agricultural systems, for products such as palm oil (Settles, 1996). In Western Africa, even following the criminalisation of slavery in Britain, and the beginning of the era of “legitimate trade”, farmers continued to grow these types of goods for export and the benefit of efficiency for the machinery powering Europe through their industrial revolution (Settles, 1996). This shows how the culture of the country was irreversible changed and remained at the mercy of post-imperial powers throughout history in ways that are less apparent.

More than Molecules

Water is the building block of life, but due to increasing populations and climate change water is increasingly scarce. “Water scarcity” is summarised by Taylor (2009) as “a shortage in the availability of renewable freshwater relative to demand”. It is estimated that over 70% of global freshwater consumption is used in agriculture, whether it be through irrigation to account for insufficient rainfall, or for consumption by livestock. With the global population expected to reach 11.2 billion by 2050 (UN, 2015), an increase of 60-100% of food production is necessary. This incoming demographic boom is particularly relevant to Africa, with many countries having a large percentage of young people, such as Angola, with 40% of their population under 15 years of age (www.cia.gov, 2020.). Climate change adds more complexity to this enigma and will prove to be a threat to food security through extreme weather events, outlined in the State of the Climate in Africa (2019), where rainfall was 50% or lower in 2018-19 compared to the historic average in the Western half of Africa (WMO, 2020).

Malawi Famer (Burke, 2017)

Next Week: A look at the current state of water distribution in Africa, and how this comes to determine the sorts of activities that can go ahead for the production of food.