Capturing the drivers of crop water footprints in Africa and its spatial patterns

Improving water efficiency in the agricultural sector is essential to ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater in a context of increasing water scarcity and human water demand. The water footprint (WF) is an established metric of resource intensity while the drivers steering WF over time remain under-researched. To advance this line of research, this paper assesses the sign and magnitude of macroeconomic, climatic, and agronomic drivers on the agricultural crop WF in 43 countries of the African continent for the period 2002–2016, using econometric panel data techniques and considering potential spatial patterns. The results reveal a significant spatial dependence in the WF across neighbouring countries. Socioeconomic factors are the most important determinant of water productivity, indicating that economic development facilitates a falling water requirement per unit of production. A negative impact of the temperature variation on the WF is also found, while the share of total land dedicated to agriculture tends to increase the crop WF in the continent. These results support designing adequate agricultural and water management policies to achieve sustainable and resilient food systems capable of adapting to anticipated population growth, climate change and other future threats to human health, prosperity and environmental sustainability in Africa.