Abstract
Water is essential for the existence of living organisms including humans. Water is needed in farms to grow crops, firms and manufacturing industry to produce products and services. This chapter examines water resources availability and management in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in climate change perspective using vector auto-regression (VAR) time series analysis. Water is known to be unevenly distributed among countries and continents around the world, particularly in Sub-Sahara Africa; the water availability varies between member countries and regions in the individual country, water supply systems experience enormous pressure to make water accessible to people in both rural and urban communities. Water security remains to be an integral part of the SSA’s effort to achieve food security and supply, halve poverty and eradicate hunger. This chapter more importantly aims to investigate impact of rainfall and temperature issues––that are climate change proxy variables––on water security and people movement in three Sub-Saharan African countries that are Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Niger. This article assesses some possible causes of migration from rural to urban area using VAR and granger causality tests; this process involves four variables namely Rural Migration ‘MR’, Urban Migration ‘MU’, Rainfall ‘Rain’ and Temperature ‘Temp’. The model predicts rainfall and temperature across 10 years and examines how these changes impact water availability and people movement in relevant countries. This study finds that some countries are experiencing water security challenges upon which large numbers migrate to urban areas. The study reveals that variations in rainfall and temperature have compounded people movements from rural areas. It is noted that the agricultural production in SSA have not improved over time and in fact, it has further decreased due to the move away from rural areas by many farmers.
Highlights
Countries from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are experiencing water security challenges, other developing countries in the world are facing water security problems
This study investigated Sub-Saharan Africa water availability and water security conditions in relation to rural-urban migration numbers
The SSA countries considered in this study are Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya (KEN) and Niger (NER)
Summary
Countries from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are experiencing water security challenges, other developing countries in the world are facing water security problems. Water security challenges may affect the environmental, economic and social stability and wellbeing in these countries those in SSA regions. The seriousness of these circumstances highlights the need to examine the impact of climate change factors––rain and temp–– that may have water security and people movement in SSA. The chapter selects three Sub-Saharan African countries on the grounds of geographical location, population size and growth rates, people migration, climatic change conditions, current and projected water resources in terms of renewable fresh water resources (m3/capita/yr), as well as economic stability and development.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
