GEOG0036 Water and Development in Africa

Kenya has a population of just under 55 million people, however over 43% of those do not have access to fresh, clean water on a daily basis. Unsurprisingly, the lack of water has also reduced the opportunity to grow sustainable crops, and with the agricultural industry providing around one third of the nation’s income , eruptions of violence have occurred as pressure increases to sustain the country’s population. The water crisis in Kenya does not just impact the agricultural industry, access to clean water is also a major concern, particularly for maternal care. Unfortunately, the Kakamega Provincial District General Hospital has been forced to provide its patients with polluted buckets of water, causing an increase in typhoid and diphtheria, exposing how the water crisis impacts all. Kenya’s story of water insecurity becomes even more complicated when one considers how more than 80% of the region is arid or semi-arid, with a mere 17% of the country considered to have high agricu...

The discussion of Zimbabwe’s food security is extensive and historically complex, with the nation suffering years of explosive political discrepancies. To gather a holistic understanding of Zimbabwe’s food security, it is crucial to recognise the legacy of colonialism and political instability this created. The radical redistribution of land began in the early1980s via the implementation of the Lancaster Agreement and called an end to the Rhodesian Bush War. The theory behind the land distribution stemmed from years of inequality between white and black farmers in Zimbabwe, with the goal to reorganise the land equally amongst farmers and transfer land ownership back to the majority blacks . However, unsurprisingly, this was not a simple process and unfortunately lead to years of corrupt government control and an intensification of farming on malnourished land, generating a decrease in crop yields. Land reform strategies ranged from market-based including the ‘willing seller-willing b...