Water and food in Africa

While more than half of Africa’s population already lives in an urban environment (especially small and medium cities), and the number of urban residents expected to rise up to 20.2% in 2050 ( CSIS, 2018 ), agriculture still remains an important source of employment  and could be a place of innovation for the environmental and demographical issues that most of these areas are facing. If the variety of climates, soils, cultures and economies cannot allow us to generalize our reflexions to the entire continent, we can however underline the importance of the water management in urban and peri-urban areas, as the line defining urban and rural is becoming blurrier, and urban agriculture is becoming increasingly important for the food autonomy and development of a lot of cities ( H. De Bon et al., 2010 ). This tendency induces conflicts around water distribution, pollution, sanitation and between local agriculture and food importation. While the density of the cities imposes important qu...