Food and Water in Africa: Start with a More Careful View

Hi and welcome to my blog! This blog will include a series of posts to discuss some key issues and potential solutions relating to the topic of Food and Water in the African context. In this first post, I would like to start with some reflections about how should we view water and food issues in this continent.

Almost undeniably, water and food are two essential preconditions of life, which are also strongly interlinked. Only with sufficient quantity and acceptable quality of water, food security could be achieved to support other economic and social development within a country (Vilakazi et al., 2019). In other words, water is incontestably embedded in food safety. 

In terms of water and food in Africa, you probably have seen or known the following statements before:

    Over 600 million Africans are experiencing water shortages. 

    Nearly one-fifth of the African population is suffering from hunger (FAO, 2021).

    Agriculture consumes over 83% of overall freshwater withdrawal in Africa (Wada & Bierkens, 2014)

From these "facts", we can easily cobble a hydropenic, starving and fragile Africa. We might also draw a compassionate conclusion that it is urgent to undertake efforts to save this broken continent and its people. But what is hidden in these "well-deserved" thoughts?

Binyavanga's article, How to Write About Africa, is very inspiring for anyone who wants to catch a more impersonal sight of Africa. It satirizes some popular portrayals of Africa made by the mainstream media, which usually describe Africa as a savage continent in need to induce readers' compaction. These descriptions are usually eyecatching but also misleading, and often can not pertinently reflect what is really happening in African countries. 

This article pushes me to reflect on the way I view African issues in the past. I started asking myself some questions. Did I choose this topic because I presupposed that water and food scarcities are widespread problems across the continent? When I was commenting on Africa issues, did I unconsciously treat Africa as a homogeneous space but not a continent of 54 countries with various conditions? How can I present and discuss the relationships between water and food in Africa in this blog without judgement?

From these reflections, I would like to set up a starting point (which is also an important goal) of my blog, which is viewing African food and water issues with careful and objective thinking. In the following posts, I will draw some big pictures about water distribution and food conditions in the continent, as well as discuss some potential solutions like large-scale hydraulic projects and virtual water trade. When doing these, I will keep reflecting critically on my depiction of Africa and try to be pertinent and context-specific. I am looking forwards to enriching my knowledge about water and food in Africa during this blogging process. If you are also interested in this topic, please keep following and feel free to leave comments and discuss with me!