Desertification in Africa is a form of land degradation that involves the conversion of productive land into desert or arid areas. This issue is a pressing environmental concern that poses a significant threat to the livelihoods of millions of people in Africa who depend on the land for subsistence. Geographical and environmental studies have recently coined the term desertification. Desertification is the process by which a piece of land becomes a desert, as the word desert implies.Darkoh, M. B. K. (1989). Desertification in Africa. Journal of Eastern African Research & Development, 1-50. The loss or destruction of the biological potential of the land is referred to as desertification.United Nations-Environmental Programme UNEP (1984) Desertification Control in Africa (2 Vols), UNEP, Nairobi It reduces or eliminates the potential for plant and animal production on the land and is a component of the widespread ecosystem degradation. Additionally, the term desertification is specifically used to describe the deterioration of the world's drylands, or its arid, semi-arid, and sub-humid climates. These regions may be far from the so-called natural or climatic deserts, but they still experience irregular water stress due to their low and variable rainfall. They are especially susceptible to damage from excessive human land use pressure. The causes of desertification are a combination of natural and human factors, with climate change exacerbating the problem. Despite this, there is a common misconception that desertification in Africa is solely the result of natural causes like climate change and soil erosion. In reality, human activities like deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable agricultural practices contribute significantly to the issue. Another misconception is that, desertification is irreversible, and that degraded land will forever remain barren wastelands. However, it is possible to restore degraded land through sustainable land management practices like reforestation and soil conservation. A 10.3 million km2 area, or 34.2% of the continent's surface, is at risk of desertification. If the deserts (Sahara and Kalahari) are taken into account, the affected and potentially affected area is roughly 16.5 million km2 or 54.6% of all of Africa. 5.7 percent of the continent's surface is made up of very severe regions, 16.2 percent by severe regions, and 12.3 percent by moderate to mild regions.
Various degrees of desertification According to three criteria: climate, inherent vulnerability, and human and animal pressure, the United Nations recognizes four degrees of desertification hazards: very severe, severe, moderate, and slight.Mabbutt, J.A. (1984) 'A New Global Assessment of the Status and Trend of Desertification Conservation’, Vol. II, No. 1 & 2, pp. 103 – 113 When land becomes completely unusable, it is said to have experienced very severe desertification. Examples of this include moving dunes, extensive large gully systems, and salt-crusted, nearly impervious soils in previously irrigated areas. These circumstances are thought to be economically irreversible. Severe desertification and moderate desertification are classified according to the extent of accelerated soil erosion and denudation, the change to less desirable vegetation, or the loss of crop yield due to reversible salinization or irrigated soils. Where there has been little to no degradation of the plant cover or soil, it is represented by the second category, slight desertification.
History The term desertification is most often associated with French botanist André Aubréville's 1949 work on African rainforests, although research claims that it may be traced back to 19th-century French colonial North Africa. The commissioned research to investigate the prehistoric growth of the Sahara Desert, which was caused by natural occurrences at the time. The phenomenon has been around for thousands of years in Africa and is not new. However, as populations have grown and human activity has increased, desertification has exacerbated significantly in recent decades.
Desertification can be traced back thousands of years in Africa, with evidence discovered in ancient literature and archaeological documents. However, the magnitude and severity of the problem have grown in recent decades as a result of a mix of natural and human factors. Desertification became an increasingly severe issue in Africa over the twentieth century, causing widespread environmental deterioration and jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of people who rely on the land for food. In response, governments, non-governmental groups, and international organizations have devised a variety of solutions, including reforestation, soil conservation, and sustainable land management methods.
Over the past century, the Sahara desert has been expanding by more than 7,600 sq km a year and is now 10% larger than it was in 1920. Desertification and desert growth were not first caused primarily by human-induced climate change, as they are now. The world's greatest deserts were generated by natural processes that interacted over time, such as water evaporation, rising winds, warm airfall, and low humidity. Human activity, on the other hand, has recently come to either expand or contract these deserts. To put Africa's contributions into context, the Sahara has been quickly expanding since the 1920s, spanning 10% more territory than it did previously, according to a study conducted by National Science Foundation (NSF) funded scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD). The drought of the 1980s was not the first man-made disaster to hit the Sahel region. The desert has been subjected to a lengthy succession of droughts, the most notable of which was the Sahelian drought and famine of 1968. It continued until 1985 and was directly responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths and the disturbance of millions of lives. Human resource exploitation (such as overgrazing and deforestation) was first thought to be the sole cause of the drought. Nonetheless, large-scale climate changes may have contributed to the drought. Despite being the most severely impacted region in Africa, the Sahel is not the only one afflicted by desertification. The Karoo in South Africa, has experienced semi-arid conditions for the last 500 years, Somalia, which has experienced three major drought crises in the last decade alone, and Ethiopia, which has seen 75% of its land affected by desertification and a major famine between 1983 and 1985.
Causes According to some academics, human causes only play a very minor supportive role in the processes of desertification, with climate being the main cause. Other researchers reverse the significance of these two factors.Glantz, M. H., & Orlovsky, N. S. (1983). Desertification: A review of the concept. Desertification Control Bulletin, 9, 15-22. Desertification in Africa is caused by both natural and man-made forces. Climate change, which has resulted in increased aridity and decreasing rainfall in many regions, and soil erosion, which happens naturally but can be exacerbated by human activity, are the principal natural elements that lead to desertification. For instance, it might be difficult to tell if desertification or desert expansion is the result of climate change or human activity.Grove, A.T. (1973). Desertification in the African Environment. In Drought in Africa: Report of the 1973 Symposium (D. Dalby and R.J. Harrison Church, eds.) London, School of Oriental and African Studies. Desertification in Africa is exacerbated by human factors such as deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable farming methods such as monoculture and excessive use of chemical fertilizers. For example, deforestation reduces the quantity of plants that may anchor soil and protect it from erosion, whereas overgrazing depletes vegetation and exposes soil to erosion and degradation. For instance, it has been argued that the Sahara's edges are primarily the result of human activity, with climate playing merely a supporting role. A third group assigns almost equal blame to man and the environment.Le Houérou, H. N. (1959). Recherches écologiques et floristiques sur la végétation de la Tunisie méridionale.Rapp, A. (1974). A Review of Desertization in Africa: Water, Vegetation and Man. Stockholm, Secretariat for International Ecology. Poor land management techniques, such as crop rotation, the use of heavy machinery that compacts soil, and unsustainable water management methods, all contribute to desertification. Mining and oil exploration can also contribute to desertification by disturbing natural ecosystems and reducing soil quality. Population expansion and poverty can exacerbate the situation by increasing resource demand and resulting in unsustainable land use practices. All of these causes have contributed to the degradation of fertile soil, posing a serious threat to the livelihoods of millions of Africans who rely on the land for subsistence.
In the Sahel, desertification is mostly attributed to wind erosion.Lal R (1993). Soil erosion and conservation in West Africa. In World Soil Erosion and Conservation, Ed. Pimentel D, pp. 7–25. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge. To put it simply, wind erosion is the phenomenon when a strong wind removes a field's topsoil. Wind erosion depletes the nutrients in the soil because the topsoil often contains more nutrients than the subsoil.Ikazaki, K. (2015). Desertification and a new countermeasure in the Sahel, West Africa. Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, 61(3), 372-383.Daniel HA, Langham WH (1936). The effect of wind erosion and cultivation on the total nitrogen and organic matter content of soils in the Southern High Plains. J. Am. Soc. Agron., 28, 587–596. Zobeck TM, Fryrear DW (1986). Chemical and physical characteristics of windblown sediment: II. Chemical characteristics and total soil and nutrient discharge. Trans. ASAE, 29, 1037–1041. This lowers the production of the soil. Furthermore, the loss of topsoil can expose the subsurface with inferior physical qualities, which lowers the permeability of the soil. Furthermore, wind erosion can hinder crop growth by burying crops beneath blown sand and causing physical harm (abrasion).Michels K, Sivakumar MVK, Allison BE (1993). Wind erosion in the southern Sahelian zone and induced constraints to pearl millet production. Agric. For. Meteorol., 67, 65–77.
Affected areas