Beneath Africa, Survey Finds 'Huge' Water Reserves

gambit3 writes with this news, carried by the BBC: "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. Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water. Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated."

Great!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When do we get to play "colonize" again?

Re:So how long will it last?

[macraig]

I doubt if very many of the people suffering from continual Guinea worms they ingest from contaminated surface water would share your worry. They're too busy trying to yank two-foot-long spaghetti aliens out of their arms, legs, feet, and abdomens. Having a guaranteed uncontaminated water source from a gigantic aquifer would end their daily war against the alien invasion.

Greening of Africa

[symbolset]

Global warming is likely to lead to a de-desertification of Africa anyway, as increasing equatorial heat increases the absorption of water by the air over the Atlantic. But it's still Africa.

Re:Oh no

[unixisc]

I looked at the map. Most of the blue areas were areas that are actually desert - the vast areas of Egypt (west of the Nile), Algeria, Niger, Chad, Namibia and so on. Aside from Egypt, most of these countries have very small populations, so population is not the problem there. In any case, nothing to worry - most of these countries are not interested in the well being of their populations, and so one is unlikely to see an overpopulation problem suddenly hit the Sahara and the Namib deserts.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Freshwater isn't the problem

[Charliemopps]

Having been to Africa, I can tell you that more freshwater wont solve the problem in the least. The water they get is not contaminated at the source. Much of it comes from wells, or Rivers and lakes. The rivers and lakes may have "Some" contamination... but that's not what the real problem is. The real problem is their horrible infrastructure. They lack even basic building inspection laws. Plumbing is done on-site, by whomever happens to be there. With no training in the field. The result is a haphazard public water supply infrastructure that is subject to contamination from the user.

A simple example is: Every bathtub that I saw in Africa did not have a shower. It had a sprayer that had a hose that led back to the side of the faucet. There was a hanger on the wall for... in every case that I saw the hanger had been long broken, and the sprayer lay in the bottom of the tub. If you fill the tub while leaving the sprayer laying in the water, you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply. It's irrelevant where that water came from, it could have been triple distilled, it's now contaminated. This sort of setup is illegal in the united states for that very reason. There were thousands of other problems like this. Now imagine that your city had this sort of problem... ALL of the plumbing would have to be replaced... from the well to your faucet. The whole thing. How could you fix that? Now imagine it's an entire continent... and now you have a grasp of the size of the problem.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States became prosperous when the British came in with devastating weapons and laid claim to its resources. So did Australia and Canada. Why didn't the same work for Africa?

Re:No they don't

[gtall]

A bigger question is why western religions are so interested in sex. Could it be because they are run by a group of horny old men? No, that surely couldn't have anything to do with it.

Western religions should announce they no longer give a two-headed rat's ass about sex, from now on they'll be more involved with the eternal verities of life, i.e., what does it all mean, why are we here, where shall we have lunch. If they would concentrate on those, there'd be much less strife caused by the religions. Well, getting rid of their voyeuristic pre-occupation with sex is one thing they can give up. They also need to give up their fear of women. I'd like to hear them proclaim to heavens they no long care what a woman wears as long as it is stylish and the colors don't clash.