Concluding Thoughts

So, we have come to the end of this blog. If there is one take-home message from this series of blogs, it is that Africa's plight is one of distribution, not quantity. The case studies that I explored in this blog such as Ethiopia, Libya, Egypt and Algeria all had a similar situation: water access and subsequently, food production is ample in some areas but not others. For Africa, its limitation has been its climate variability and seasonality. As a result of Africa's physical variabilities, regions like the Sahel and Southern Africa have suffered more than others. In this blog, I explored various solutions for water and food scarcity used across Africa, including water transfer projects, desalination and dams. Although these projects have worked to some degree for their respective users, as a continent characterised with significant poverty levels, expensive engineering solutions will be out of the picture for many African nations. Likewise, the physical geography across Africa has also meant that some engineering solutions will not work, such as trying to utilise dams, where rivers run dry or trying to desalinate water in a landlocked country. 

 

However, one solution stood out, and that was the utilisation of 'virtual water'. Using 'virtual water' omits the need for physical infrastructure, making it a viable solution for many other African countries. If virtual water's limitations can be overcome, such as its dependency risks, environmental and economic costs, then 'virtual water' may appear as the best solution to tackling Africa's water and food crisis. However, I do recognise that there is not a simple solution to solving Africa's plight. Instead, Africa must incorporate various solutions, which are holistic and acknowledge the complexities of the continents' social, economic and physical characteristics. 

 

Auto critique: 

It should be understood that as an individual with little knowledge and expertise of Africa, my perspective on the continent may have been inaccurate or even biased. Throughout the blogs, I tried to utilise literature from respected sources, including academics based in Africa and those from the 'West'. Having used over 15 peer-reviewed articles by some of the most respected names in this field, I feel that I provided a fair and accurate representation of many of the regions this blog focused on. However, from the perspective of an insider in Libya, Egypt or Algeria, infrastructure projects will arguably have created losers, such as the victims of environmental injustice. I have attempted to be as critical as possible concerning the solutions that African states have utilised. However, if I were to re-write this blog, I would attempt to gather different mediums of data, such as local scale EIA's, social media posts and potentially speaking with locals to gather a more profound and richer insight into this topic. I feel that much of my literature highlights most of these solutions as overwhelmingly positive. Henceforth, by utilising data from a bottom-up perspective, I will formulate a more accurate representation. Likewise, as an individual with no relation to Africa, speaking with and gathering data from locals would be more accurate and reliable than the perspective of an outsider. To sum it up, my perspective on Africa may have been biased and unrepresentative of reality, but this is inevitable when writing about an unfamiliar and under-studied region of the world. 

 

I would like you for taking the time to read this series of blogs. I hope you enjoyed learning about this exciting topic and hopefully, you learnt a thing or two about a misunderstood continent. I would love to hear solutions you think could be imposed to overcome their water and food scarcity issues. So please feel free to share them for all of us to dwell on!