Water, Food and Development in Africa

In my last blog post, I (briefly) touched upon the institutionalised nature of discriminatory policies which have been negatively affecting smallholder farms in South Africa. In this blog post, I want to explore the potential of smallholder farms across the continent of Africa as a solution to securing food security in an increasingly water-scarce world with an emphasis on the role of indigenous and localised agricultural and irrigation strategies. Small holder farmers are defined as farmers with less than two hectares of land  (Conway et al, 2019) . According to  Svrinivasan et al (2017: 138) , ‘water withdrawals mainly for irrigation account for approximately 70% of the world’s freshwater use’. Water for agriculture is increasingly a scarce resource  (Conway et al, 2019)  which is largely due to the effects of climate change, for example below average rainfall and increased temperatures leading to prolonged droughts.   Vilakazi (2017)  states th...

An article that I came across by the Financial Times entitled ‘ ‘ We must decolonise water rights for Africa to advance’  stated that the ‘majority of small scale farmers have no legal access to water’. The term ‘legal access to water’ reminded me of the aftermath of the Oslo II Accords which had paved the way for Israel’s, discriminatory water distribution policies meaning that for decades, Palestinians have been denied access to safe and clean water.It was an artificial water scarcity  (e.g. depletion of groundwater resources, inadequate water infrastructure and resource theft)  implemented and engineered by the state of Israel and sustained by military action and the Israeli water company, Mekorot  ( Rabi, 2014 ). Access to water is a fundamental human right and Sustainable development Goal 6- to achieve clean water and sanitation for all by 2030. In this blog post, I will be discussing how a historic class division in South Africa and a ‘failure to f...