Final thoughts...

I want to use this last blog post to wrap up my thoughts around what I have written over the past few weeks and also what I have learned in the process.  

Before starting this blog, I had some general ideas about food and water in Africa, but I didn’t realise how much potential there actually is to the future of food security in Africa. There have been some amazing case studies and approaches to show new (and old) ways to tackle some of the problems Africa is facing. For example, I have found agroforestry and saline water as an irrigated technique very interesting approaches and these could be implemented by the local people with the help of NGOs or governments that fit the local communities. On that note, one of the most interesting topics has definitely been African indigenous knowledge systems and how this could be the key for many African countries to come out of the poverty trap and alleviate the problems related to food security and access to water. Although I have concentrated mostly on looking at successful case studies critically from a positive perspective, they all have one underlying problem – Westernised development approaches. Unless the development run by scientists from the Global North don’t take into consideration African agricultural knowledge, the history and the landscapes of African countries and don’t involve local communities, successful development projects cannot be achieved and will lead African countries into continuous poverty trap. I believe this is something governments and and organisations should learn from. Like I mentioned in the introductory post I still believe that Africa does not lack resources, but capital, infrastructure, education, and management capabilities to manage these resources. Now with the COVID-19 outbreak, it is now more crucial than ever to find more (and new) solutions to manage water resources and food security in Africa. 

It is also important to mention that it is not only water that limits agriculture and food security in Africa. War and conflicts are one of the main results of famine due to competition for natural resources, while other outcomes could be disruptions in trade and aid floes, closure of markets and price changes (Clover, 2003). Another contributing factor, also mentioned in one of my previous posts, is land tenure. The distribution of land in eastern and southern Africa is very uneven (Clover, 2003), while fairer land distribution of land could help in reducing poverty. Last, but not least, one of the most concerning topics, HIV, is also affecting agriculture, deepening the crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most HIV infections, where 58% of the affected are women (Clover, 2013). Food security is affected when a region has high levels of people have HIV due to loss of workforce, productivity and therefore income for households. These examples show that while water plays a big role in agriculture in Africa, there are other factors contributing to food security.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Until next time!