Assessing the Feasibility of a Food-Energy-Water Nexus Development Project in Sub-Saharan Africa

Development efforts have recently begun to implement a new approach that focuses on the Food-Energy-Water Nexus. This approach uses these systems together in order to improve multiple aspects rather than prioritizing resources to one over the others. My project focused on identifying communities which could possible host a development project focused on the Nexus. I worked with my mentor to create a feasibility assessment using factors concerning agricultural habits, political organization, and weather patterns. I chose 5 countries that had large agricultural sectors, stable political climates, and a history of previously successful development projects. Using data from censuses and other development projects, I worked my way down to smaller and more specific locations. I also identified possible stakeholders and partners in the area that could possibly work with us to undertake a project.

Hello. I’m Elizabeth Fortson and this summer I worked on a project to assess the feasibility of conducting a food, energy, water nexus development project within different communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. I worked under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Sklarew who has done similar projects in the past. The Food-Energy-Water Nexus is an approach to development that looks at food, energy and water systems as part of a whole, rather than as separate systems. The previous approach usually prioritized one over the others, such as putting more resources toward energy, while neglecting food and water systems. However, the nexus approach sees them as a whole system and looks at ways to improve them all simultaneously, as they all work together. The nexus approach recently gained popularity. However, large organizations such as the World Bank and the U.N. are focusing more resources on researching this type of development and funding more projects that utilize this type of approach. My mentor recently completed a Nexus development project in rural Virginia and was interested in finding a sister community in Sub-Saharan Africa to possibly conduct another Nexus development project. In my major, I focus on international development, so I was very interested in taking part in this project. A major part of a Nexus development project is the desk report, which was the focus of this summer’s research. The desk report has all the necessary background on the area that you’re conducting a project in, so that when you go in to do the actual development, you can be as best prepared as possible. Things that you can include in the desk report can be economic factors that might affect the outcome of the project, stakeholders and political organization, weather patterns and agricultural habits. For example, in some countries, the water systems are managed at the national level, rather than the super local level, so if you’re doing a project that is going to work a lot with the local water systems, you would want to make sure that you keep that in mind and that you can work with the national government. For this project, I chose countries based on their political stability, the presence of agriculture in the economy and a history of successful development projects. I chose 5 countries, and then I worked my way down the more specific and local level. Based on the factors previously mentioned, I ended up choosing 5 countries to focus in on– Guinea, Ghana, Namibia, Botswana and Malawi. I used the data from the national censuses and data from project reports of other development projects that took place in the area to find the necessary data for the countries as whole. Then, I worked my way down to the regional and district level and then down to the specific community or village level. As the locations got more specific and they got smaller, it became more difficult to find the necessary information. For example, Malawi’s census does include the average inches of rainfall per year for Malawi as a whole, but it doesn’t include that information for a specific small farming village in Southern Malawi that I might be interested in. This led to a lot of elimination of certain communities as it was simply too difficult to get the necessary information to provide a proper desk report. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this project and I would like to thank my mentor for her invaluable help throughout this entire process.