COVID-19 and agriculture in Africa

I would like to start the first official blog post off with a relevant yet concerning topic not only for Africa but also for the rest of the world - COVID-19. It is not only the virus itself that has had a big impact on our health, but also how it has changed the ways our societies function and the problems it brings with it. 

Access to safe water is particularly important right now during the outbreak of COVID-19 because the spread of the virus can be mitigated by good sanitation and hygiene practices such as washing hands. Furthermore, access to freshwater is important for farmers as it helps them to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 on food security. 

While the cases of COVID-19 have remained relatively low compared to some of the Western countries and has not reached an alarming point, the effect of borders closing and restrictions in movements have created much more concerns around water and food availability (Boretti, 2020) and will do much more damage in Africa than any other part of the world because of increased poverty, economic downturn, inequality and a lack of access to basic human needs in the continent where these scenarios were already a reality before the outbreak.

COVID-19 cases per million people, July 2020

The water development projects in Africa are already underdeveloped because of reduced funds allocated by the government and growing debt (Boretti, 2020). This will get worse with COVID-19. As the populations grow, the demand for water will too and further water development projects to mitigate or partly solve water-related problems cannot be put through because no funds are available. Thus, the relationship between water scarcity and dept is deeply interconnected in Africa. 

Africa is the continent with the highest rates of malnutrition compared to the rest of the world in terms of % of the population (WHO, 2020). The people who are more susceptible to the effects of COVID-19 are those that have weakened immune systems caused by malnutrition, and the food security which causes malnutrition is likely to increase because of movement restrictions (WHO, 2020). A study conducted by PERC in May 2020 stated that ⅔ of people in 20 African countries are afraid to go hungry if they had to quarantine for 2 weeks or more and in Nigeria and Kenya social media users have confessed to breaking quarantine rules to search for food and water (Moulds, 2020). 

Graph to show disruption of COVID-19 in food systems and nutrition

Thus, it is more important than ever to find solutions to water scarcity in Africa not for only sanitation, but for (small-scale) farmers to provide food for the local populations and help to reduce poverty as agriculture in many African countries has the largest scale of the workforce and a high proportion of the poor depending on it for livelihoods (Shetty, 2006).