Africa: Invest more in irrigation to boost food security, urge experts

Nairobi - Faced with increasing climatic variability, Africa needs to invest more in irrigation to boost food security, a new report says, pointing out that agricultural land in Asia is six times more likely to be irrigated.

"Much of Africa is expected to experience reduced annual precipitation, which would, along with higher temperatures, enhance the potential productivity-enhancing effects of irrigation," the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), says in a 2 September discussion paper, Measuring Irrigation Performance in Africa.

"African countries produce 38 percent of their crops (by value) from approximately 7 percent of their cultivated land on which water is managed," the report states.

"The disproportionate contribution to agricultural production of Africa’s small irrigated area suggests that returns on additional investment in irrigation would be high, both in terms of greater food security for the continent and greater production of export-quality agricultural goods."

Quoting statistics from a survey conducted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, IFPRI says African countries have less renewable water per unit area and a higher population density than the world as a whole, with about 1ha of cultivated land per person in both sub-Saharan Africa and Africa as a whole.

"They [African countries] withdraw only a quarter as much water for human uses as does the world as a whole, and the irrigated share of their crop land is less than one-fourth of the world average," according to IFPRI.

Sub-Saharan Africa's internal renewable water availability per hectare is less than two-thirds of global availability, IFPRI says, reflecting both regional scarcity and the trans-boundary nature of water flows in the region.

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