Capturing the Drivers of Crop Water Footprints in Africa and its Regional Petterns

Abstract

The water footprint (WF) is an established metric of resource intensity, although the drivers that guide this indicator over time remain under-researched. To advance this line, this paper assesses the impact of macroeconomic, climatic, and agronomic drivers on the agricultural crop WF in Africa using econometric panel data techniques and considering the existence of potential spatial patterns. The results reveal a highly significant spatial dependence in the WF across neighbouring countries. Per capita GDP is the factor with the highest influence on the WF, 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 tend to increase the crop WF in the continent. These results could help guide the design of adequate agricultural and water resource management policies to achieve sustainable and resilient food systems.