Introduction

Hello! Today as my first blog post, I thought we should begin by looking at Africa from a general scope; finding out why the continent is so renowned for having water scarcity problems and why it's particular climate and political conflicts further exacerbate these problems.

Causes of Drought and Water Scarcity

As Africa lies mainly within the intertropical zone between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. Generally, the continent experiences a warm climate all over, but more so 30 degrees north and south of the equator as this is where the solar radiation intensity is at its peak; causing temperatures to reach up to 40-45°C in some countries during the summer months (Dickson, 2018).

Given the high temperatures within Africa, drought cycles occur where alternating wet and dry periods happen in a specific area. Rainfall patterns across the continent vary, which in turn affects the duration of these wet and dry periods. Due to the impacts of global warming in recent years, drought cycles have become less humid and long, causing water security issues across certain regions in Africa.

Figure 1: Rainfall cycles across Africa over the year between June-March (Source).

Illustrated on the map above, the different wet and dry cycles are heavily influenced by the annual monsoon that blows across sub-Saharan and southern Africa across the year. Above, shows a general trend of low to no rainfall over most of the continent, with the exception of certain regions like Tanzania and Liberia. These characteristic rainfall cycles highlight how northern Africa, and the ‘Horn of Africa’ have serious, prolonged periods of droughts, which last all year long (Euklidiadas, 2021). This overtime will have secondary impacts on water security on countries across North/East Africa such as Egypt, Sudan Libya and Somalia as drought affects the water levels in streams, reservoirs and groundwater. These are often used as the main water supply for local people, particularly in poorer more rural places (Euklidiadas, 2021) . 

     Figure 2: Dry, degraded land in Senegal 2017 (Source)

 

Drought is often intensified by over exploitation and degradation of land caused by deforestation and inefficient agricultural practices such as felling of trees for firewood and overgrazing of vegetative land as shown in Figure 2. This leaves the land barren and unprotected, increasing the drought and low water levels in the hydrological cycle hence, further escalating water scarcity issues. Current estimates suggest that 46% of Africa’s land area is degraded as well as 75-85% of the continent’s cultivated area also being degraded. This has affected approximately 485 million people living in these areas, through loss of water sources and increase in food insecurity from lower livestock and farming (Agnes, 2020). 

Africa’s main river basins; Nile, Niger, Orange and Lake Chad have been characterized as highly degraded land at 78%-86%, whereas the river basins of Zambezi and Congo are significantly less degraded, most likely from the much higher rainfall represented in Figure 1. Given this disparity in water sources across the continent, political difficulties begin to arise where sanctions and legislations against land exploitation are introduced, causing neighbouring countries around these basins to have conflict on water usage and logistical procedures to maintain them (Agnes, 2020). In later blogs, I will be looking more closely into specific river basins and their transboundary conflicts.