The reality of water use in Africa

In continuing the theme of trying to examine generalisations, I focus this post on water use within Africa. If you search, "water in Africa" in Google images, you get the results seen in figure 1. Based on these results one might assume that in Africa what little water there is, it is used for personal and domestic use. We see women and children having to carry buckets or jerry cans, which would only be able to supply water for a limited amount of uses. 

Figure 1. A screenshot of the search results when you search, "water in Africa" in Google images.

There are however two issues with this assumption. The first is the statement that there is little water in Africa. As I mentioned in my previous post Africa is a vast continent and although water scarcity, however you choose to define it, is prevalent, some areas have an abundance of water. In particular across central Africa are numerous areas with a "large" rainfall surplus (UNEP 2012). This means the level of water use is incredibly variable but, it is also changing overtime. For example, in Mathare Valley, a squatter town in Nairobi per capita water use has trebled over thirty years, where as Temeke, in Tanzania, had seen a decline of the same magnitude during those years (Thompson et al. 2000).

The second issue is the fact that in reality domestic water use represents a very small proportion of total water use in Africa. The actual proportion of water usage is 83.1% for agriculture, 4.3% for industry and 12.6% for domestic use (Wada et al. 2011). It is crucial for us to recognise this given the fact that 23% of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa is from agriculture (Goedde 2019). One might think the relationship of water and food in Africa is worth analysing, due to the potential of famine, but the significance is much greater than that given how food production is so commonly the way in which African people have to sustain their entire livelihoods. With this knowledge we are able to develop a greater appreciation for the need to find solutions to support the crucial relationship between water and food in Africa. 

It is also worth noting how variable the agricultural water use can be. For example, at higher altitude the predominant source of water for agriculture is through rain water harvesting, which can support crops, such as wheat barley and potato, where as at lower altitudes there is greater reliance on higher storage aquifers that support different crops, such as Maize (Tucker et al. 2014). Given this variability, context specific solutions are necessary to tackle water and food issues- there is no silver bullet. 

The aim of this post has been to once again tackle a generalisation about Africa, as I had done so in my previous post. However, by focusing on the particular on the relationship of water and agriculture, I hope  this post has also given more of an indication as to why water and food is such an important area of research, especially with regard to finding context-specific solutions.