Across Africa, efficient water use is becoming increasingly important. Researchers and local communities are working together in six countries to restore land, water and livelihoods through nature-based solutions.
In Ranelou, in northeastern Senegal, local residents and environmental experts are working together to improve livelihoods and agricultural conditions and protect the region’s biodiversity. They are planting and managing trees to improve soil quality and digging and reinforcing local ponds to capture more rainwater.
This work is taking place at one of six innovation sites known as Living Labs established by TRANS-SAHARA. The remaining five are located in Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Ghana and Tunisia, each chosen to reflect different contexts across the region.
TRANS-SAHARA, alongside its sister projects AfroGrow and GALILEO, is developing nature-based solutions for land and water management across Africa.
Listen to the voices of local communities
Researchers are working with local communities to test different agroforestry techniques to restore degraded ecosystems, improve water and food security, and increase farmers’ incomes in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the Sahel region.
“Local people say, ‘We need water. We need water today, we need water tomorrow,'” said Aminata Diallo See, head of partnerships and fundraising at Senegal’s Reforestation and Great Wall Authority.
The Great Wall Initiative is a land restoration program endorsed by the African Union and supported by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The plan involves 11 countries and aims to restore an 8,000-kilometre (8,000-kilometre) continuous strip of land across Africa, from Senegal to Djibouti.
The race is on to repair ponds before the rains arrive in Ranerow. The rainy season, which used to last from July to October, now often begins in August, making it even more necessary to conserve every drop of water.
For Diallo Sy, listening is more important than prescribing solutions. “We need the vision of the local community, because they are the ones implementing the project. We need the involvement of the local community to deliver an efficient project with good results.”
connected solutions
TRANS-SAHARA operates within a framework known as the Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus. Unlike traditional agroforestry, which focuses on integrating trees with crops and livestock, the WEFE Nexus approach treats water, energy, food, and ecosystems as part of a single system, rather than as separate issues.
It is well suited to Africa’s unique environment, where water is already scarce and under increasing pressure from climate change, drought and population growth. The aim is to increase farmer incomes across Living Labs and create new carbon sinks on degraded land.
TRANS-SAHARA leverages a variety of mutually reinforcing solutions. As an example, municipal organic waste can be turned into organic fertilizers to improve degraded soil and help retain rainwater.
This process captures methane, a short-lived greenhouse gas with a higher global warming potential than CO2, and the organic fertilizer increases crop yields and improves soil health. Planting trees across farmland goes even further, sequestering carbon while providing shade and supporting biodiversity.
“We are using water security as an entry point to explore a broader and more holistic nexus-based approach to sustainability,” says Dr. Daphne Gondhalekar, project coordinator at the Department of Urban Water Systems Engineering at the Technical University of Munich.
“Nexus connects water, energy, food, and ecosystems, as well as waste and transportation.”
easier access to water
At the heart of this project is groundwater recharge. Previous efforts have tended to use solar power systems to pump water from the ground to irrigate fields.
TRANS-SAHARA reverses that logic. Rather than pumping water, the focus is on replenishing underground reservoirs known as aquifers, making water available to communities with little or no electricity. That requires knowing what’s there in the first place.
The team has trained local residents to monitor groundwater levels using simple, low-cost sensors that anyone can operate and maintain. The measurements will be fed into a shared network, giving researchers and water authorities a clearer picture of how protected areas change over the seasons.
The next step is to capture rainwater and return it underground during short, heavy rainy seasons. Much of it now flows directly from land stripped of its topsoil by desertification, but the rest is rapidly evaporating in the heat, a double loss that managed aquifer recharge is designed to prevent.
groundwater remediation
In each Living Lab, the team is designing infrastructure to capture rainwater, filter it through layers of soil and substrate, and return it to groundwater. This ensures that the water that reaches the aquifer is clean enough for use.
Dr. Gondhalekar explained that researchers are trying to inject water more directly into the aquifer to increase the available amount as quickly as possible.
Data on these aquifers is lacking, so researchers use existing wells and boreholes as reference points. The communities that drilled relied on generations of local knowledge about where to find water.
The project is now building on that legacy, with local residents in Llaneloo working with the national water board to map current groundwater reserves before the rains arrive.
“This is the first project in our region that specifically focuses on groundwater recharge,” Diallo See said. “Pond restoration will address immediate needs and recharge work will move forward into the future.”
lessons learned
With men often leaving their grazing routes seasonally, Llaneloo women are taking the lead in improving agroecology, including better soil management, open pollination and pest control, to expand the cultivation of fruit, vegetables and staple crops. The benefits for food security, nutrition and community health are well documented.
The team is also tracking the effectiveness of practical interventions, measuring changes in soil quality, water availability, biodiversity and farmer incomes across all six living labs. The findings form a new business model aimed at providing local communities with the tools to manage their own resources.
The team aims to have a model ready for deployment across African Union countries by the end of TRANS-SAHARA in 2027, with a goal of 2030 for wider use across Africa.
As Europe faces worsening cycles of floods, droughts and heatwaves, the researchers’ findings on groundwater, aquifer recharge and crop yields are expected to inform interventions far beyond Africa.
“Europe can learn a lot from Africa in terms of drought management,” Dr Gondhalekar said. “If we don’t reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions immediately, climate change means that in 20 to 30 years’ time the landscape will look like the Sahel today.”
This article was originally published in Horizon, EU Research and Innovation Magazine.
The research for this article was funded by the EU’s Horizon program.
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