Category: Sub-Saharan Africa
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New groundwater maps reveal interesting patterns about water security in Africa that could help it adapt to climate change
Reserves of groundwater in much of the populated parts of Africa are being replenished at rates that could help to protect communities against the damaging effects of climate change and sustain widespread groundwater pumping for drinking water, a new study reveals. Researchers estimate that the long-term groundwater recharge in Africa is approximately 15,000 km3 (cubic…
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UPGro Science: Links between groundwater access and poverty are complex and sensitive to context [S2]
The links between groundwater access and poverty are generally indirect, complex and context specific.
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Groundwater information for Africa: The Chronicles Consortium – finding and making long term groundwater records available [K5]
The Chronicles Consortium – part-funded by UPGro – has collated long-term groundwater records from across Africa. This is allowing an assessment of the impacts of groundwater use, climate variability, and climate and land use change on groundwater storage. This data is all freely available to download from the International Groundwater Resource Assessment Centre (IGRAC). This…
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AMCOW Pan African Groundwater Program (APAGroP): A new pan-African initiative promises to open peer-to-peer learning between national governments and increase groundwater data sharing and research collaboration [K4]
UPGro and its partners have played a key role in raising the profile of groundwater among high-level policy-makers in Africa. The UPGro Programme, along with other African and International groundwater partners, supported the AMCOW Pan-African Groundwater Programme (APAGroP) under its remit to support and strengthen the capacity of Member States and regional and international organisations…
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Groundwater information for Africa: the Africa Groundwater Atlas – the main online information portal for groundwater for all African countries [K3]
Groundwater has a critical role to play in securing safe water supplies, economic growth and food security in Africa. Groundwater is widespread on the continent, generally of high natural quality, and more resilient to climate variability than surface water. It therefore has potential to provide secure water supplies for domestic, agricultural and industrial use in…
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Pan-UPGro workshop (2017) led to the completion of an unprecedented analysis of multi-decadal, groundwater-level records from 9 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa [C3]
The analysis was informed by the first-ever collation of long-term groundwater-level records across an aridity from hyper-arid to humid in Sub-Saharan Africa and an UPGro-wide, capacity-strengthening and knowledge co-production workshop held in 2017 in Tanzania involving Early Career researchers and their mentors and supervisors from all 5 UPGro consortium projects. The results of this study…
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UPGro Science: No substantial decline in the volume of water stored in the major aquifer basins over the last 15 years, but there are major localised risk areas [S6]
At the scale of the African continent, UPGro research has shown that there has been no substantial decline in the volume of water stored in the major aquifer basins over the last 15 years. However, local contexts do differ, and in some African cities, groundwater levels have fallen.
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UPGro Science: understanding of African/Tropical recharge processes has been improved. Climate change may enhance groundwater recharge in arid and semi-arid areas, presenting opportunities for long-term management as part of national climate adaptation strategies [S4]
UPGro researchers found that in wetter areas recharge happens every year, but in dryland areas substantial recharge less regularly, often just once or twice a decade.
UPGro 