1. A short Introduction to the Demographics and Climate of Africa

Welcome to the blog.

To contextualize my perspective: I am an Economics and Geography undergraduate with no prior personal or academic experience related to Africa. Therefore, my perspective of Africa will be formed primarily through the culmination of research and reports from academia, local and intergovernmental organizations. Wary of the potential pitfalls in studying and writing about Africa from the perspective of a largely western-influenced education system, as satirically critiqued by Wainaina (Wainaina, 2005), I will strive to incorporate research and insights from both leading African academics and local voices living through the experience. I acknowledge that although the task of forming a perspective on the heterogeneously complex topic of water and food in Africa may appear incredibly daunting, it is imperative given the continent’s growing strategic importance and impact globally.

Africa is the second largest continent in the world, comprising of 54 countries and 1.4 billion people (Galal, 2023). It is also home to the world’s highest fertility rate, at an average of four children per woman (O’Neill, 2022), with the continent’s population projected to reach almost 2.5 billion by 2050 (Statista Research Department, 2023). To support myself in developing an overview of this complex continent, I further examine trends across six sub-regions organized by their economic and political groupings in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Six African sub-regions organized based on economic and political groupings (WMO, 2022). 

In Figure 2, average temperature trends across all six sub-regions have generally increased between 1901-1930 and 1991-2021. Notably, while average temperatures across Africa have been rising at an increasing rate since 1961, the warming trend in North Africa is particularly alarming as the rate of warming has more than doubled from just under 0.2°C/decade in 1961-1990 to just over 0.4°C/decade in 1991-2021 (Met Office, n.d., cited in WMO, 2022).

Figure 2: Trend in average temperatures across the six African sub-regions (Met Office, n.d., cited in WMO, 2022).

In addition to rising average temperatures across the continent, both temperature and precipitation have been increasingly extreme and variable. Figure 3 highlights the increasing frequency of extreme heat events in Africa while Figure 4 illustrates large differences in mean annual rainfall and variability.

Figure 3: Annual number of extreme heat days (warmest 1% of records) in Africa between 1979 to 2021 (African Center of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), n.d., cited in WMO, 2022).

Figure 4: Average annual rainfall across Africa (Map 1) (Hijmans et al., 2005, cited in Thornton, 2014) and annual rainfall variability (Map 2) (Jones and Thornton, 2013, cited in Thornton, 2014).

Figures 5 and 6 illustrate spatial variation of temperature and precipitation anomalies respectively in 2021. The figures indicate higher temperatures across most of Africa, with the exception of Southern Africa, and considerable geographical differences in precipitation anomalies. North Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, and the Indian Ocean regions generally experienced below average rainfall while Central Africa and Eastern Africa recorded above average precipitation.

Figure 5: Anomaly in near-surface air temperature in 2021 relative to 1981-2010 (left) and the approximated uncertainty in temperature anomaly for 2021 (right) (Met Office, n.d., cited in WMO, 2022).

Figure 6: Anomaly in absolute precipitation in mm for 2021 relative to 1981-2010 (left) and precipitation quantiles for 2021 with brown and green areas indicating abnormally low and high precipitation totals respectively (right) (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), n.d., cited in WMO, 2022).

So, what drives these large variations in precipitation across Africa? The classic explanation has been the seasonal movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) (Nicholson, 2009). However, recent research has shown that this explanation has several shortcomings, especially with regards to varied definitions, parameters, and confounding with other factors (Nicholson, 2009; Nicholson, 2018). Instead, precipitation variability is largely attributed to stages of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and anomalies in sea-surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans (WMO, 2022).

In the following posts, I will further examine how food and water development are shaped by a complex myriad of physical, economic, social, political, and cultural factors.