Hello
readers!
I filmed a
YouTube video summarising my concluding thoughts. I hope you enjoy watching.
Before writing my first post, I thought I knew a lot about the continent of Africa. However, now looking back, I have learnt so much and I have managed to bust some myths along the way! For example, there are many myths surrounding GM crops. Some of the myths are true, where GM crops are indeed sterilised in order to protect seed piracy. I have learned a lot about the overall situation in Africa, the differences between economic and physical water scarcity and the impacts of various irrigation schemes. It was also tough to write about some emotional topics such as the famine in South Sudan. But it is an extremely important example to highlight how vulnerable food security can be.
How can we
prevent such tragedies in the future? To a certain extent, all of the topics
mentioned in my blog posts could hold the answer. Large scale irrigation
schemes along with smaller local irrigation initiatives and drought-resistant
GM food to use less of this irrigated water can all work. But there is no one size
fits all solution. Each country’s situation must be assessed individually and
what has worked in one country may not work in another. But even on a more
local scale, different river basins and catchment areas will have different
characteristics and populations to tackle, including transboundary issues as
well, highlighted with Ethiopia and Egypt with the construction of the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
One thing is
generally agreed: climate change will intensify. Therefore, difficult decisions
need to be made quickly as millions of lives could be lost before adaptation
takes place. Mitigation could slow down the effects, but African countries
cannot be complacent.
African
nations also need to learn from mistakes which were made in the past. Large
scale irrigation schemes have had some serious failures relating to poor
management and maintenance for example but these problems could have been
prevented. I am hopeful that with increased collaboration, cooperation and data
sharing between African nations that improvements can be made and mistakes will
not be repeated.
Throughout
the course of this blog, I have shown the myriad of ways in which water and
food are interlinked, some of which you might not have thought about before. I
hope you have thoroughly enjoyed your read.
Yours
sincerely,
Droughts and Floods
