Introducing the complexity

Water and food - two of the most fundamental components of human survival. When you think of water and food specifically in the context of Africa what comes to mind? Famine? Mal-nourishment? Drought? These are undoubtedly issues within the continent, which I will aim to unpack through my blog posts, but the role of water and food in Africa is much more complex than is commonly thought. Prior to reading the article, "How to Write About Africa" (Wainaina 2019) I too will have likely fallen victim to making stereotypes that fail to uncover the complexities. However, the article opened my eyes to the generalisations about Africa that are all too common within the media, compelling me not to make the same mistakes.  Even selecting a cover photo for this blog was no easy feat, as I was careful to not to implant a generalised image of the continent into the mind of the reader. 

The aim of this first post is to ensure that you do not assume Africa to be a continent without variability, whether that be in terms of climate, culture or landscape. The reason as to why this variability is so significant is because of how it helps uncover a more nuanced depiction of water and food issues within Africa, thus helping us identify more appropriate solutions. We can see this when considering water scarcity for example. Water scarcity was originally formally quantified in the 1980s, through the water stress index, which defines water scarcity with regard to the amount of people that are being sustained by a single flow unit of water, quantified as 10^6 m^3 year^-1, with water scarcity occurring above 100 persons/flow unit and the water flow being calculated by mean annual river runoff (Falkenmark 1989). The issue with such a definition however, is that it masks seasonal variability, due to how it is calculated using annual figures (Damkjaer and Taylor 2017). This is a major flaw, because Africa is the continent with the most variable river discharge in the world (McMahon et al. 2007). We can therefore see how failing to uncover complexities is problematic, as in this case failing to considering variability does not provide a complete picture of water scarcity, which is crucial to understand in the context of food, due to water's role in food production. 

Figure 1. Map of Africa showing distribution of rainfall (Masih et al. 2014)

Africa's geographical variability is arguably even more important that the seasonal variability. Figure 1 hopefully helps you realise this, with central Africa having as much as 2000 mm rainfall per year, in comparison to almost negligible levels in the Sahara Desert. The variability of rainfall not just do latitudinal differences, but also, due to the differences in topography, with areas of higher elevation experiences rainfall, with high elevation areas such as the Highlands in East Africa experiencing higher rainfall than surrounding areas of lower altitude. Rainfall is just one of the many features of Africa that can vary greatly across the continent. 

What I aim for you to take away from my first post is the fact that Africa is incredibly diverse and diverse in a number of ways. Therefore, I hope that you are at the very least questioning any preconceived generalisations you may have had about Africa. Having a more accurate image of Africa and appreciating this diversity will allow us to create more tailored strategies to successfully address the water and food dynamic.