How small-scale communal irrigation schemes are being transformed into profitable, equitable and economically sustainable schemes through investment in smart technologies, farmers, institutions and value chains.
IWMI/WLE's groundwater expert Karen Villholth sits down with FutureEarth. "When we look at transboundary aquifers, many of them are connected to surface water so we cannot address them separately – we need to understand the whole system."
Researchers collected groundwater from nine countries across sub-Sahara Africa to study how climate change, and particularly, changing rainfall patterns, will impact demand.
In sub-Saharan Africa, groundwater provides a reliable and consistent water source. A new report highlights the impact of climate change and variability on how groundwater is restocked.
More freshwater will probably be drawn from underground sources as climate change impacts water supplies above land in Africa. But how much of that water can be used sustainably?
Published in the Daily Maverick: About half of municipal wastewater and water treatment works across South Africa are in a poor or critical condition. Many need urgent rehabilitation, and 11% are dysfunctional. Over three million people still do not have access to a basic water supply service. Self-supply in partnership with government could be the answer.
Study after study has shown that a lack of affordable credit to purchase pumps is the number one reason why more farmers in sub-Saharan Africa don't adopt irrigation. Until farmers find a way around it, there is a danger that the emerging revolution in smallholder irrigation could stall.
In recent years, the mitigation of climate change and the improvement of soil fertility by sequestering carbon in the soil has become a hot research topic. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), supported by WLE, have had great success in developing projects to provide individual farmers and extension officers with soil information of relevance for their management decisions, meeting an increasing need for spatial data on soil properties at multiple scales.
WLE researchers based at ICRAF have authored a chapter in the recently launched GII 2018 report, highlighting the making of fuel briquettes from organic residue as an important innovation for Sub-Saharan Africa.
By Claudia Sadoff for the Telegraph. Malaria research is currently focused on new methods of genetic mosquito manipulation but the way large dams are currently built and designed creates massive mosquito breeding grounds, adding to the disease burden. Changing dam design is a significant and neglected area of opportunity.
The Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) aims to fill a major gap in soil spatial information in Africa. To this end new soil data were collected at over 9,000 locations from 60 sentinel sites in Africa and combined with collated and harmonized soil legacy data from over 18,000 locations in Africa.
