Agricultural cooperatives are widely regarded as effective institutions for supporting smallholder farmers, reducing poverty, and improving food security. However, empirical evidence varies with mixed findings across different contexts. This study used a primary data of 820 farm households to examine the relationship between membership of water user association (WUA) and food security, using a quasi-experimental research design. The findings show that WUA membership is significantly influenced by factors including age, marital status, access to extension services, participation in supplementary irrigation (SI) and drought index insurance (DII) initiatives, farm size, and an asset aspiration gap. The results further indicate a positive association between WUA participation and household food security. These findings suggest that rural development policies should focus on strengthening existing WUAs and fostering the establishment of new ones through inclusive approaches that address food insecurity.

Rapid urban growth in sub-Saharan Africa challenges food supply of cities. As food and other organic matter are transported from production areas to consumption points, water, which has been used for their production, is transported virtually. This study aimed at determining the magnitude and sources of virtual water flows in food trade of two West African cities, in order to better assess food provisioning risks and water resource use and planning. To this end, flows of unprocessed food from local, regional, national and international sources were systematically recorded at all roads leading to Tamale, Ghana and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The survey was conducted within two years covering the peak (November - December) and lean season (March - April), respectively, for six days in a row. Virtual water flows were computed by multiplying the flow quantities (t yr⁻¹) by their respective virtual water contents (m³ t⁻¹). Results showed that virtual water of all food commodities imported to Tamale and Ouagadougou were 514 and 2105 million m³ yr⁻¹ respectively, out of which 68% and 40% were re-exported to other regions of the country. The data also showed major seasonal variation in virtual water flows across the year. Reflecting their dominating role in local diets, cereals contributed most to the total virtual water inflows in both cities. Southern Ghana is the major net virtual water importer from Tamale through cereals, legumes, vegetables, and livestock. The Northern Region of Ghana, on the other hand, is a net exporter of virtual water in all food groups apart from fruits. In Ouagadougou, large flows of virtual water were imported in cereals, specifically rice from Asian countries, via Ivory Coast.

Urbanisation will be one of the 21st century's most transformative trends. By 2050, it will increase from 55% to 68%, more than doubling the urban population in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Urbanisation has multifarious (positive as well as negative) impacts on the wellbeing of humans and the environment. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) form the blueprint to achieve a sustainable future for all. Clean Water and Sanitation is a specific goal (SDG 6) within the suite of 17 interconnected goals. Here we provide an overview of some of the challenges that urbanisation poses in relation to SDG 6, especially in developing economies. Worldwide, several cities are on the verge of water crisis. Water distribution to informal settlements or slums in megacities (e.g. N50% population in the megacities of India) is essentially non-existent and limits access to adequate safe water supply. Besides due to poor sewer connectivity in the emerging economies, there is a heavy reliance on septic tanks, and other on-site sanitation (OSS) system and by 2030, 4.9 billion people are expected to rely on OSS. About 62–93% of the urban population in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia rely on septic tanks, where septage treatment is rare. Globally, over 80% of wastewater is released to the environment without adequate treatment. About 11% of all irrigated croplands is irrigated with such untreated or poorly treated wastewater. In addition to acute and chronic health effects, this also results in significant pollution of often-limited surface and groundwater resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Direct and indirect water reuse plays a key role in global water and food security. Here we offer several suggestions to mitigate water and food insecurity in emerging economies.

The current phase (2010-2013) of the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) research is addressing the Volta Basin Development Challenge (VBDC) which has been defined as “integrated management of rainwater and small reservoirs for multiple purposes”. The research-for-development program is designed to explore the institutional, socio-economic and technical aspects of small reservoir development and maintenance within a wider rainwater management system in the Volta Basin to maximize water for food and ecosystem services. The purpose of the inception workshop was to review and assess all VBDC projects for coherence and integration towards achieving the overall goal. Secondly it provided an opportunity to launch the research agenda, share our plans and approaches with a wider, relevant stakeholder group, and to obtain important feedback which can be fed into the research process. The key question to address during the workshop was: “what are the lessons learned in the inception phase of VBDC research and how would these lessons shape project implementation in the next phase?”. It was expected that the workshop would contribute to ensuring relevance of the research agenda, as well as strengthening the integration of the five VBDC projects and their teams.

Impacts of increasing population pressure on food demand and land and water resources have sparked interest in nutrient and water balances and flows at a range of scales. In IWMI Research Report 115, it was tried for the first time to quantify rural-urban food flows for selected cities in Ghana and Burkina Faso to analyse their dependency on food supplied from rural vs. peri-urban vs. urban farming. Both, the urban nutrient and water footprints are closely interlinked. Currently, 80-95 percent of the domestic water used and the nutrients consumed go to waste without treatment or resource recovery. The economic dimensions are significant. Options to reduce the environmental burden by closing the rural-urban water and nutrient cycles are discussed.

The quest to improve the mired development challenges of developing economies at a global scale have in recent years constituted policy imprimatur of development discourse, including the role of national and local resources. “Nexus” is an ultra-prioritized integrative global development approach. It denotes connection(s) linking two or more phenomena or variables. It is therefore not surprising to witness of-the-moment approaches such as the development-security nexus, migration-development-security nexus, and water-energy nexus, among others. Particularly relevant to this article is the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus as an integrative strategy to tackle prosaic issues of industrialization, poverty reduction, food security, and ecological sustainability. Adopting a qualitative methodological approach, the article studies the Bui dam to elucidate how the nexus operates in a complex and tense environment. The central argument is that most analyses of WEF interventions, particularly from the mainstream development literature rarely interrogate complex politics of interest amongst the trident sectors (water, energy, and food). The dominant studies tend to dwell on the technical or instrumental aspects. But an understanding of the complex relationships at play needs a critical approach. Our key argument is that the WEF nexus is prominently embedded in complex historical systems that tend to counter-balance the hyper-deductive projected costs and benefits. It is critical to view the relations amongst the WEF from a non-linear and realistic perspective. WEF as an embodiment of a complex system helps us to understand the multi-level, contradictory, and diverse interests at play within, between, and across the systems. Even though the nexus operations on an assumption of seamless collaborative relations among and between institutions, agencies, and actors in the policy and program implementation space, an analysis of the Bui project in Ghana shows tensions, side-lining, and inter-role conflicts among the actors, where the energy sector actors weigh power and resources over other institutions and actors in the space to drive the nexus.

West Africa's rice imports currently satisfy 70% of the soaring local demand, worsening the food vulnerability of an increasingly urbanized population. Despite considerable rice-growing potential, lack of water control systems, access to improved seeds, agrochemicals and appropriate mechanization have resulted in modest production growth rates, unable to alter the region's dependency on imported rice. Governments aim to boost production with import duties and input subsidies. However, questions remain as to whether these policies enable the rice sector to respond to changing consumers preferences for high grade rice and to contribute to national economic growth. We present the results from a Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) on rice production in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Niger and under three water management systems: irrigation (public scheme), supplemented rain-fed (rainfall aided by autonomously-sourced water supplies) and purely rain-fed. Our results show that policy interventions in these West African countries (i.e., input subsidies and import taxes) did not significantly enhance the profitability of rice production to farmers due to the effect of market failures (limited capital access and non-competitive market for rice) and the low quality of local milled rice. The PAM results point strongly to the importance of improving rice quality and yields through more efficient water management and post-harvest handling/processing and targeted breeding to match consumers' preferences.

This study estimated the gains of virtual water, Phosphorus (P) and Phytic Acid (PA) through rice and wheat import to Ghana for the period 1998–2005, and assessed the implications of increasing rice import coupled with declining domestic production for food security. The total virtual water of Ghana associated with rice and wheat import for the study period was 5574 Mm³, while the total P and PA was 1,364,097 and 3,825,438 tonnes, respectively. Domestic paddy rice production started declining from 2003, but was exceeded by import from 2001 onwards. Particularly for rice, the combination of factors such as surging demand and per capita consumption, low yield resulting from less land under cultivation and irrigation, and high import bill, necessitates policy actions to remove constraints on domestic production. The paper, therefore, suggests policy actions to increase domestic rice production and to minimise Ghana's exposure to the risks inherent in rice import.