The Water Paradox in Africa in a Changing Environment

As previously mentioned in my previous blog posts, it is clear that the ‘ water cycle is broken ,’ and its consequences are worsened by land degradation from human practices and environmental change. It is important to note that the long-term environmental change and land transformation worldwide is a by-product of centuries of resource exploitation, intensive agricultural practices, infrastructure development. ( Marchant et al. 2018 ) Furthermore, the expected temperature change from global warming presents the urgency of innovating effective water facilities, as it is estimated that 0.5-3.1 billion more people will be exposed to water scarcity . Satisfying this increasing demand for water also goes beyond addressing environmental change, such as the political impacts seen in the past and the ones to come. Given that more than 80 bodies of water in Africa are shared between two or more countries , observable on Figure 1, it has been seen and is still expected that there will be intern...

Migration of Nigerian population through intense floodings In this post I will discuss my updated insight on the floodings in Nigeria and how the situation evolved. The updated report explained that between September and October, around 2.4 million were displaced from their homes around the 36 states, where water collection facilities were unable to sustain the intense precipitation following the release of water in the Lagdo dam by the Cameroonian government. Furthermore, it has been expressed by local authorities that the Nigerian government had done insufficient efforts in dredging bodies of water around populated cities, causing the spread of the floods to worsen. This stresses out the importance rethinking ‘ecological fund’ as a priority rather than an intention, where you would need to efficiently develop adapted urban planning based on each individual towns, and provide rapid support following early warnings of floodings to reduce the consequences on human lives, households an...

Following the study cases I explored in the previous blog posts, I will discuss the influence of climate patterns on extreme weather events in Africa. The two events worth discussing are El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). ENSO has an influence around the Tropical Ocean, where El Niño tends to increase precipitation from warming the ocean surface, with La Nina cooling down the ocean surface and decreasing. Even though it is not geographically located next to Africa, previous studies have suggested that ENSO has influenced the amount of heavy rainfall in 1970-2000 in Eastern Africa, and it is generally considered to be a driver behind drought in Southern Africa through the inter-annual climate variability created in this region. Furthermore, ENSO has an influence on the Indian Ocean Dipole, directly involving Eastern Africa and surrounding areas of the Indian Ocean. Indian Ocean Dipole can be defined as the difference in sea surface temperature betw...

Land in Madagascar next to river bank in drought prone zone Among countries in Africa with complex water trends, Madagascar is a case that is useful to address. This is mainly due to Madagascar’s intensifying climate variability from environmental change, causing an increasing imbalance in precipitation across the island and rising extreme weather events such as flooding, cyclones and droughts. As you can see on Figure 1 , there is an important difference in climatic conditions depending on the region in Madagascar. On the Western and Southern parts, there is a higher mean annual temperature than the Eastern coast, as well as around 2000-3000 mm less annual precipitation in the Southern coast than the East. This gives rise to distinct weather occurrences depending on the region.   Figure 1: Mean Annual temperature and mean annual precipitation in Madagascar obtained from the WorldClim database Water scarcity The region most affected by the case of water scarcity would be Souther...

One notable water paradox to analyze is the case of Nigeria and their flood trends, a recurrent climate event that has been severe this year. Indeed, it has been established that the 2022 floodings have been the worst of the decade in Nigeria. This is observable through the satellite imagery NASA provided of a comparison of Southern Nigeria between 11 th and 24 th October 2022 ( Figure 1 ), where there is clear increase of water mass going through the Niger river, severally damaging large surrounding cities such as Lokoja and Idah. In total, the World Bank argue that these recurrent floodings have a direct impact on key sectors such as agriculture, health, economy, and trade. The floodings also subsequently lead to a spread of Cholera through flooding , as the contaminated water spread to clean bodies of water. Notable climate researchers have explained that the damages of these floods in West Africa are strongly associated with a lack of governmental efforts to address these env...

     Hello and welcome to my blog! This blog will explore the water paradox in Africa through study cases of different countries, in relation to the constant environmental change we witness around us. Before I present you with different study cases showing extremes of the water paradox, we will explore the concepts and their impacts in Africa.     Water in Africa   When hearing about water in Africa, there is a consistent pre-conceived idea of this subject, which Is part of a greater idea of what Africa is. This is accurately highlighted in Binyavanga Wainaina's sarcastic work ‘ How to Write about Africa ,’ where the reader can easily recognize the author’s stereotypical words used of a generalised Africa associated with, poverty, tropical, against sustainable development and more importantly, ‘ hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving .’ Now, the first key point to understand water in Africa i...