The Water Paradox in Africa in a Changing Environment

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...