Water & Food in Africa

Writing this blog in the last few weeks is a very interesting journey that I certainly learn a lot from. I explore several topics about water and food security in Africa, which I was interested before in but didn't get chances to dig into. Inspired by Binyavanga's article, I wrote against the oversimplification of African water issues by reflecting the existing and future complicated surface water resource situations across the continent. Then I discuss three potential solutions towards the water and food insecurity from different perspectives. Different types of water storage systems, particularly small-scale and naturally-formed ones, are able to ease seasonal water imbalance, while virtual water trade could spatially reallocate water resources from an economic pathway. Once associated suspicions are dispelled, GMO methods can enhance the efficiency of agricultural water usage. In principle, these are all innovative approaches to water and food challenges, but as the Tanzan...

Theoretically speaking, ideal policymakers could use a variety of technological , social, and economic strategies, such as those outlined in my earlier posts, to strike a balance between water shortage and food security. However, when it comes to realistic water resource conservation, small-scale irrigational farming is frequently blamed and farmers' interests are often neglected. In this post, I would like to discuss the tensions between traditional smallholder irrigation and other stakeholders in Tanzania to examine farmers' dilemmas in the face of regional water shortage. Located in Tanzania's southwest, the Great Ruaha River (GRR) is a significant watershed of the Rufiji River. GRR has a drainage area of roughly 68,000 km 2 and is critical to agriculture output and national hydropower generation ( Baur et al., 2000 ), as well as delivering water to over 6 million people ( Lankford et al., 2009 ). The majority of riparian residents work in agriculture, and there are thr...

In the previous two posts, I addressed two solutions to Africa's water and food scarcity challenges: correcting unequal time distribution of water resources through storage systems and easing asymmetrical geographical distribution via virtual water trade . Both of these ideas stem from the desire to make better use of current water supplies – but what if we could address the problem by changing the crops we grow? As an outcome of modern biotechnological development, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have always been burdened with both expectations and opprobrium. GMOs, according to the FAO , are species 'in which one or more genes have been introduced into its genetic material from another organism using recombinant DNA technology. This approach allows for the development of crop traits (such as disease resistance, lower water and nutrient input requirements, higher yield and nutrition and so on) that may adapt to a broader range of growing environments, hence addressing f...