the african "blue gold"

Accessing groundwater is the easiest way to give smallholders in Africa access to safe water. In addition, during dry spells smallholders also have access to water for livestock or for supplemental irrigation. Therefore the use of groundwater could be a very good option to mitigate effects of climate change. Despite of general agreement across all development sectors on the benefits of using groundwater for smallholders, very little is happening on the ground. This is because we still lack information about where and how much groundwater is available. Now, a British team took up the challenge to review a continent wide groundwater literature and completed it with own data in order to fill this knowledge gap. And they found that there are huge water reserves hidden under the African continent...a glimpse of hope for a continent that desperately needs better access to save water...but let's hope that there will not be a rush on this "blue gold" by commercial farmers leaving the smallholders out of the game (see http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-it-really-about-land-grabbing.html).

Find here the very informative report on Aljazeera about this research:

as well as a more detailed article that completes this video: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/04/2012420204337712453.html 
and find the related scientific article here : http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/2/024009 
(if you cannot access it but would like to have a copy, please contact me)

Land tenure conflicts in Kenya

On my last day in Nairobi, I just came across this Al Jazeera video on Kenyan pastoralists. It reminded me that despite of Kenya being so much more developed than Ethiopia (Nairobi really feels like the New York of Africa), in drought prone areas the issues are similar.

I guess the story of this Kenyan pastoralist should remind us, that the economic concepts that we usually apply on crop land in the wet tropics (and corresponds to the mainstream economic theory) should not be transferred to the pastoral zone (see post on economics of droughts,http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.com/2011/10/some-good-explanations-on-economics-of.html).
In the Blue Nile basin, land certification, that is giving the (individual) ownership of the land for 20-99 years to a farmer,, resulted in having more farmers starting to invest into soil and water conservation infrastructure (terrace, bund) and planting trees. As a result watersheds are better managed and agricultural productivity increases.
This video shows that transferring this logic to pastoralist zone where land that has traditionally be managed collectively mainly leads to conflicts. Despite of this, I still believe that land in pastoralist zone should be certified quickly at least for the Ethiopian case, where "land grabbers" are queuing for getting the land (http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.com/2011/07/rights-of-ethiopian-pastoralists.html).
I think there is scope for developing a land tenure system that garantees to pastoralists the access to their land, but does not hamper them to mange it in their traditional way.

Unconventional way to fight against famine : Insurances

Many of my posts discussed what to do in area with famine. The problem in emergency situation is that it generally takes time to get the finances to start any emergency relief. But smallholders in drought prone zone know very well about the about the risk they are facing and if given the opportunity are more than willing to reduce this risk.
Drought insurance is one answer to this problem : it allows a smallholders to pay a small amount of money, and if she/he becomes a victim of the drought, she/he immediately get compensation which will allow him to adapt.
See more about the Ethiopian drought insurances schemes :
More about the Kenyan schemes

What's the role of Switzerland in Ethiopia? report from the first Swiss Development Day

The Swiss Ambassador to Ethiopia, Dominik Langenbacher, invited all the Swiss development players to the first Swiss Development day, offering a a great opportunity to network, look for synergies and increase cooperation.
Many NGO involved in education and children were present, but also many NGOs invovled with natural resource management. Also representative from the National Centre of Competence in Research : North-South  http://www.north-south.unibe.ch/content.php/page/id/265 and University of Bern were present.

Thanks to the Ambassador and probably many other people, and maybe also thanks to the drought and the media sharing terrible images from this part of the world, the Horn of Africa is getting on the top of the Swiss political agenda. Next to the emergency humanitarian support from Switzerland to the region, a proposal to the Swiss parliament to be voted in August 2012 is in preparation. This proposal foresees to make the Horn of Africa a program area. This implies that the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), would be running significant projects in this area.

The major focus proposed for the area is agriculture and livelihoods, followed by health and governance. Also two "multilateral topics" for which Switzerland would like to contribute to are : a water initiative and food security. This sounds very promising as good natural resource management and agriculture are nowadays seen as the most contributing to better livelihoods in Ethiopia.

Even if Horn of Africa would not become a program area there is scope for better cooperation between the players, also between the scientific players. The Embassy already announced a meeting with all the scientific players! I hope that this day was the beginning of a better cooperation of the CGIAR (ILRI/IWMI and others) with the Swiss Research and Swiss Development cooperation.

Some good explanations on the economics of droughts

I started this morning with reading the USaid global water newsletter, and found a very interesting article on the the economics of drought.
I think one lesson to retain is, that many farmers living in a crop-livestock mixed system produce food to feed their families and consequently are not affected to much by food price volatility. On the contrary, pastoralists who mostly live in the the drought affected zone, do rely on food markets to access food. They sell livestock to get cash with which they then buy staple food. In time of droughts, livestock prices collapse (excess supply because too many people need to sell) and staple food prices increase (supply shortage), leaving people hungry. Interventions should therefore aim at stabilizing prices, the article shows how the Ethiopian government does this with the productive safety net program.

Open publication - Free publishing - More drought

Open publication - Free publishing

Famine in the Horn of Africa: Challenges and Opportunities for Mitigating Drought-Induced Food Crises

Today, the CGIAR (consultative group on International Agricultural Research) hold a media briefing over the famine in the Horn of Africa to discuss evidence based intervention in arid areas.

One of the key topic that was addressed is the role of vulnerability of the farmers of the Horn of Africa and how to make this farmer more resilient and able to cope with shocks, such as for example drought. Topic addressed where :
- market access and market information
- information about weather and location of fodder
- improve fodder for livestock
- veterinary services for livestock
- drought tolerant crops
- water storage for crop, livestock and domestic use
- food aid, and information systems to inform about where food surpluses are
- weather insurances

The whole discussion reminds us that there is no such a thing than one simple solution. Every place is different, in location like Somalia with very little rainfall, it does not make sense to talk about irrigation schemes. Livestock provides more food security that crop. Whereas in areas with more rainfall, agro-ecological specific drought resistant crops be made available in affordable small packages can make more sense.

If you got curious, look at the full debate :

innovative solutions to fight hunger

In my last post I spoke about what really makes sense to support people that face hunger, but i did not have any concrete example. Here is a great speech with concrete examples of what can work and how.

Droughts in Ethiopia

Last week, I joined one of our team into the fields in Woreta, near to Tana lake. The surroundings of Tana lake belong to the high potential locations for agriculture. During the current long rainy season (my flight was unable to land in Bahir Dar due to heavy storm) farmers are fighting with excess water. Drainage systems and rice cultivation on non-permeable soils are the answers to these heavy rains. In some places maize was flooded and house almost under water.

Flooding near Woreta

The green watershed about 10 km from Woreta

The rice fields in the Woreta plain

After one week in the field with no access to internet and other news, it is pretty shocking have all my friends worried because they have seen pictures of drought and starvation in news :

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93247

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/hornofafrica/

Interestingly enough, the news was not shared in the few English newspaper of Ethiopia, and as usual some internet pages were blocked. In Addis, it is business as usual, food shortages have not increased.

The big discrepancy between North and South in Ethiopia can be explained by the diversity of Ethiopia in terms of elevation and rainfall. The Ethiopian highland in the North around Tana lake belongs to the humid tropic and is source of the Blue Nile. This area has water excess rather than water shortage these days. The South and lowlands on the contrary experience droughts. The map below (taken from the Ethiopian rural economy atlas from IFPRI) shows annual rainfall and clearly shows much lower rainfall in the South near to the Somali border compared to the Tana lake (blue feature in the North) area.