In this article, The Rockefeller Foundation’s water team members discuss ground water development in Africa. They argue that science grounded in the needs of poor communities can drastically improve well-being and quality of life.
Groundwater rarely earns a place among news headlines.
But a recent study by Alan MacDonald of the British Geological Survey captured global imagination by the sheer magnitude of its conclusions: it estimates Africa’s groundwater storage capacity at 660,000 km3, or 100 times the continent’s annual renewable freshwater resources, and 20 times the freshwater stored in African lakes.
This new information has wide implications: currently more than 300 million in Africa lack access to safe drinking water, and 95 percent of farmed land across the continent is predominantly rain-fed.
Yet despite this vast opportunity, the debate so far has focused on what type of development is “appropriate” for Africa instead of focusing on how we can use this new information to improve the lives of poor or vulnerable populations.
The paper argues these groundwater resources should not be used for large-scale urban or agricultural development, focusing on small-scale household and community irrigation systems using intermediate borewells and handpumps instead.