Months before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the FAO-led report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020, had identified Africa as the region with the fastest-growing number of undernourished people.
In the absence of a dramatic change of fortunes, the report said, Africa was on course to overtake Asia and host more than half of the world’s hungry by 2030. And this, with less than a fifth of the global population. With the pandemic seen as accelerating social trends and intensifying economic undercurrents, this unenviable breakthrough could come, if anything, even sooner.
Some of the reasons are historic. Others, such as persistent pockets of instability and conflict, are more circumstantial. Among structural causes, one stands out: the unforgiving climate that affects large sub-continental areas.
A dry, exposed land…
The whole northern third of Africa, the greater part of its southern third and the Horn all show red hot on FAO’s global map of aridity. Much of the continent, with the exception of its central belt, receives less than the five millimetres of rain considered effective for agriculture. This makes it imperative that water be derived from renewable sources.
Yet more than 60 percent of renewable water sources in Africa are concentrated in just five countries: Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Liberia and Sierra Leone. This leaves fifty nations, including Africa’s largest and most populous, sharing the remaining third.
COVID-19 is causing added strain. More water must be allocated to hygiene: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates global extra needs for handwashing alone at some 58 cubic tonnes per day. “That’s as much as a tenth of all the water in the rivers, the lakes and the ground of France,” explains Maher Salman, who heads FAO’s Water resources management group.
There is more: while we have yet to tally the precise amount of water hoovered up by COVID-19 hospitalisations, evidence from the nearest precedent – the SARS epidemic of 2003 – points to some 100 litres per patient.