'Huge' water resource exists under Africa

www.bbc.co.uk...

Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.

They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.

Could this be the answer to al the problems in Africa! Endless amounts of food could be grown from this! This is fantastic news!! Wahoooooo!

reply to post by CaptainBeno


Libya does indeed have a huge aquifer under its eastern region a pipe line and pumping stations were being built before the 'spring'

reply to post by pikestaff



Great stuff! I was always led to believe that the whole continent was bone dry.......why wasn't this found before by simple drilling? Judging by the map, you could pretty much drill anywhere and get water?

As with any resource the key is developing the infrastructure to use that resource. Without a dictator their is chaos. It will take a third party like China to come in and develope the resource. But sadly water isn't that valuable yet. Unless you're actually there you probably don't appreciate it.

Many of Africa's past, current and brewing wars have their origin in disputed water rights:

The Nile. Egypt downstream, Sudan, Ethiopia and even Uganda upstream. And a resource already stretched very thin.

The North African Iittoral. No major rivers to speak of, but Colonel Gaddafi's mining of the sub-Saharan aquifer is causing alarm among his neighbors, most notably Algeria.

Botswana and Namibia in South Africa have several times come close to war over Namibia's threat to divert waters away from the Okavango system, home to Botswana's major source of water and one of Africa's last great refuges for wildlife.

Link

Water is life, as well as giving life to industry. In short, forget oil, diamonds and gold. Humans cannot drink oil. Conflicts over water will become desperate and will involve something more than nations and tribes and tribal boundaries. Africans will simply be fighting to survive.

The most resourcefully rich continent just keeps on giving.

Um, "notoriously dry"?
I beg to differ. You're thinking of upper northern Africa.
That doesn't mean the entire continent is dry...far far from it.

I thought most land mass had aquifers underneath at some point? Obviously the scale varies but it is there nonetheless.

The problem being that over use of the aquifers dries them up completely and that really does have potentially disastrous consequences.

Whilst kind of good news, i would much rather our clever scientists came up with a solution for making safe, clean water that didn't drain existing resources.

The article states 75m in depth coverage thats alot of water if that was used up very quickly it would be amazing i say that they start tapping them. Thats 225 feet of depth spread over most likely the dark blue areas by area that looks bigger then the great lakes and there doing ok.

reply to post by ed1320


I said kind of good news because if they rely on this aquifer it will eventually run dry. Yes, it is good news but at the same time, lets develop new techniques and systems. At the end of the day, Africa consistently suffers from severe droughts - surely it would be better using the aquifer for emergencies than solely relying on it?

Look at the Texas pan handle - i read an article recently on how several aquifers all over the US (but the article was predominantly about Texas) are so low they are in danger of running out of water. If similar were to happen in Africa, it would be truly catastrophic for the people.

reply to post by Flavian


I see where ur coming from buddy but just watching them kids drink from the nasty streams on the late night commercials is just terrible. Maybe use what they can for drinking and bathing u know keep it to a minimum no industrial usage. Filth breeds disease and anything to help them people who suffer so bad everyday is a great thing.