Water and Food in Africa: Introduction
This is the first blog post of many that will be posted over the next few months. These will focus on the challenges and issues that arise from Water and Food in Africa. Water resources Water is a complex resource with a variety of different indicators and thresholds for water stress and scarcity. Water scarcity can be described as a lack of renewable freshwater resources that do not meet demand . A prolonged time period of water scarcity can be defined as water stress where human and ecological needs cannot be met. Falkenmark's water stress index (WSI) linked food and famine to water suggesting that a single person needs 1000m ³ of water a year. When this amount of water is not available water stress occurs. This WSI has been widely used due to its simplicity but it " fundamentally misrepresents both freshwater resources and demand in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa ". This misrepresentation comes from the variability of water in Africa. Central Africa around the eq...