Introduction: Writing about Africa
I begin this blog by mentioning Wainaina’s (2005) satiric essay ‘How to Write about Africa’ which is both engaging and brutally honest and is worth mentioning at the start of this blogging experience, as his ideas provide somewhat of a framework for what follows. His essay highlights the whitewashing of all things African related from travel writing (sunsets, wide empty spaces) to politics (corrupt politicians,) to western benevolence – ‘without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed’ ( Wainaina, 2005 ). As this blog is writing about Africa, it seemed only fair to engage with this piece of writing in the context of water and food and its impact on development. According to Jones and Van Der Walt (2004) , water is at the ‘heart of many of Africa’s problems’. An increasingly ‘scarce resource’ ( Mehta, 2003: 5066) , water in the context of Africa, is closely linked to drought, famine, starvation, corruption and poverty. The extent to which the continuing l