Changing the development paradigm in African agricultural water management to resolve water and food challenges

ABSTRACT

Meeting growing demand for water and food in Africa, and other parts of the Global South, presents a significant and critical challenge over the next 50 years. This paper draws on an ongoing project in Africa to outline the research-for-development work that is urgently required to facilitate a paradigm shift in agricultural water management. Such work should lead to increased productivity and profitability of agricultural water use to allow agriculture to release some water to meet the growing needs of other sectors, while still meeting food security needs and contributing to a prosperous rural population.

KEYWORDS:

• Research-for-development needs
• profitability
• productivity
• water and food availability
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the significant contribution of Ms Karen Parry for copy-editing and structural editing of the paper, and Mr Peter Ramshaw for his work on Figure 4.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was written as part of the project ‘Transforming Small-Scale Irrigation in Southern Africa’ partially funded by the Australian Government via the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research [grant numbers FSC-2013-006 and LWR/2016/137]. The project was also supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) and CGIAR Fund Donors.