How does water affects development in Africa

As global food prices rocketed in 2007 - 08 media stories started to emerge about large land grabs taking place in Africa. Notably large Chinese companies or more commonly known as ‘China’ buying up hectares and hectares of land. The Economist reported that more than 1 million Chinese farmers were cultivating crops in Africa, The Atlantic stated that the Chinese had set up a US$5 billion fund to invest in African agriculture, CBS News posted an article quoting ‘It has been widely reported that China recently purchased half the farm land under cultivation in the Congo’ ( O’ Brien, 2010 ). Think tanks published stories that China had ‘pledged’ to invest $800 million in modernising Agriculture so that rice could be exported to China, that China had bough 2.8 million hectares of land in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or were farming over 100,000 ha in Zimbabwe ( von Braun and Meinzen-Dick, 2009 ; Mo Ibrahim Foundation 2011 ). However none of these stories are or were true, they ...

My problem with water scarcity measurements, especially the Falkenmark Indicator Water scarcity, what is it? Water scarcity can be broadly understood to mean a lack of access to an adequate quantity of water to fulfil human and environmental uses, or, in very basic terms means demand exceeds supply. There is not one all-encompassing definition for what water scarcity is, as different indicators measure different types of water scarcity. Water scarcity is caused primarily by two reasons : growing freshwater use, and depletion of usable freshwater resources. Within water scarcity there are 2 types; physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity: Physical Water Scarcity = When a region or country has inadequate natural water resources available Economic Water Scarcity = When a region or country has adequate natural water resources available but poor management (usually a lack of investment and infrastructure) restricts access. Falkenmark Indicator So how do...