Vincent Kitio
19 September 2007
opinion
Vincent Kitio argues that the recurring famine across Africa cannot simply be blamed on a lack of water. On the contrary, he suggests that a number of traditional low cost, water lifting technologies for irrigation, that have been used in various arid and semi-desert regions of the world, would go a long way to alleviate famine across the continent.
Recent images shown on Kenyan television could not fail to move even the most stone-hearted among us to tears. It was heart wrenching to see women hopelessly cuddling the lifeless bodies of their children, victims of merciless famine that swept across the country. Many appeals were made by government, churches, and even the corporate world, to help mitigate against the disaster.
Across the continent and to my home country of Cameroon, a similar event recurs almost every two years. Appeals are usually made by those in authority seeking food to help the victims. These are some the issues that leave me pondering how my fellow learned Africans and I and I can contribute to alleviate the suffering our people have been undergoing.
The problem of recurring famine goes deeper than the often touted reason of lack of water to help grow food or for animal use. The water levels available in Kenya are enough to sustain a hunger-free nation. In some parts of Cameroon, people suffer famine despite that country having the distinction of being home to the wettest climate on earth.
Examples abound of how others have managed to overcome famine. Despite the scarcity of water in semi-desert and arid lands of North Africa, the Arab World, the Mediterranean countries and part of the South East Asia, farmers there enjoy better food security, compare to sub-Saharan Africa. This is not because their economies are better off to enable them to easily pump water for irrigation. Long before the discovery of fossil fuel, most of these countries already enjoyed food security. In fact, in order to cope with the harsh climatic conditions with little rains, inhabitants of these dry lands developed traditional knowledge of water lifting techniques to exploit streams, rivers and underground water for irrigation to increase food production. As a result, farmers are able to harness available water to grow crops and harvest up to three times a year. In this process, all available forms of energy are put into use, such as human power, animal power, water power and wind power, to lift water for irrigation.
These ancient water lifting technologies that have been used in Europe, the Arab World and part of Asia for centuries are still ignored in sub-Saharan Africa. Farming in Africa depends heavily on rainfall and human labour; and therefore, agriculture is vulnerable to the weather. As part of a lasting solution to the recurrent drought and famine, there is a pressing need to document, adapt and transfer these technologies to areas suitable for their application.
Famine in Africa has reached unprecedented and disproportion levels. Images of malnourished children, weak adults and carcasses of livestock are portrayed in the mass media every day. All the sub-Saharan Africa countries are affected by this drought, which many people argue could have been prevented or minimised.
Many attribute the origin of this preventable situation to poor governance, corruption, over population, climate change and dependency syndrome on food aid from foreign assistance. The root causes of famine remain the dependency of African agriculture on the weather, particularly the rain. This heavy dependence not only reduces the number of harvest per year, but also gives little freedom to the farmer for proper planning. Several years ago, rain-fed agriculture was not an issue in Africa, since entire communities could migrate from drought areas to greener pastures. This is no longer the case as no free land is available any more.
Globalisation is also contributing to the burden of famine: cheap crop imports dominate some local markets to the detriment of local crops. This situation is worsened by the fact that agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa depends heavily on human labour as opposed to mechanisation. As a result, farmers need to provide more and more effort for little output. The application of irrigation methods in African agriculture remains very limited due to the water drudgery associated to it. The percentage of land irrigated in Africa is the lowest of the world.
It is therefore time to seriously explore other alternatives and affordable ways of improving traditional farming systems. Africa is endowed with permanent rivers that flow undisturbed to the sea, passing through hectares of idle lands suitable for agriculture. Using some of these rivers and streams to irrigate lands will be very beneficial to present and future food security in Africa.
The high operational cost of motor pumps to increase productivity through irrigation is simply not affordable to the majority of African farmers, and the high cost of the pump itself is prohibitive. Drilling boreholes is another solution, but again it is very expensive and costly. It is common knowledge that people living in arid land have developed irrigation techniques that have ensured them food security for centuries. This is the case of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and many other Arab States, India, China and Israel, just to mention a few. Fortunately, despite the advance of modern technology, some of this traditional or indigenous knowledge are still in use today after thousands years of operation.
In the city of Medinet El Faiyum, also known as the Garden of Eden, situated 100km south of Cairo, over 40 waterwheels, known as Noria, are used to lift water from the river Nile for irrigation. In this ancient city known as a garden in the middle of the desert, farmers are able to harvest three times a year despite the fact that the region receives only three days of rain a year. In addition, El Faiyum Governorate is considered as the main granary of Cairo. Ef Faiyum waterwheels were introduced several centuries ago by Ptolemic engineers. They are still working today side by side with electric water pumps to grow olives, vegetables, fruits, nuts, sugar cane, rice and wheat.
The Noria, is a simple wooden waterwheel with buckets which use the flow of the river to lift water to an irrigation aqueduct above the river: water by gravity is directed to several farms. The noria works round the clock, seven days a week, all year round, provided that there is a flow of water. This time-tested technology, invented more than two thousand years ago, most probably by the Romans, has survived up until to today because of their efficiency and effectiveness on food security. Thousands of them are still in operation in Spain, Portugal, Syria, Iraq, Mexico, China (in China, they are made out of bamboo tree). The city of Hama in Syria is very famous for its different norias, built along the Orontes River, some of which are still used to irrigate urban agriculture while others, national heritages, attract thousands of tourists every year.
The Romans relied on irrigation systems to ensure food security in the empire. Roman architects and engineers developed different techniques as described by Vitruvius in 01BC in his Ten Books on Architecture to support their agriculture. Some of these irrigation systems have survived up until today. In 1913, Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary gave this definition: 'Noria - a large water wheel, turned by the action of a stream against its floats, and carrying at its circumference buckets, by which water is raised and discharged into a trough; used in Arabia, China, and elsewhere for irrigating land.'
The Norias found in Spain were introduced during the Islamic domination and have double sets of buckets on each side of their rims, other have two wheels on the same shaft. This allowed the system to increase the amount of water lifted. Spanish priests introduced Norias in Mexico during the colonial period. Some of them are still in operation in farms located in the northern part of the county. Their buckets are made of plastic material as oppose to clay pots or wooden buckets.
Another living testimony of this magnificent time tested technology is the largest noria (over 20 metres) known as Al-Mohammediyyah in Hama, Syria. It was the subject in one of the famous American television programme called Ripley's Believe it or Not! It had the title: 'A water wheel on the Ornotes River in Syria is still working, although it was built in the year 1000.'
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