Three-quarters of people in sub-Saharan Africa rely on groundwater, but most countries cannot afford the expensive borehole networks needed to monitor it. The problem is that over-pumping degrades aquifers, erratic rainfall disrupts farming, and a key solution—Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR), which intentionally stores water underground for dry periods—remains largely unused across the continent because assessing and monitoring aquifer storage is cost-prohibitive. This project will test a low-cost microgravity sensor that measures tiny changes in gravity caused by shifts in underground water mass, benchmarking it against traditional methods in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and South Africa. If the sensor works, water managers and communities could track aquifer levels and design MAR schemes without drilling expensive monitoring wells. That would make groundwater management affordable for cash-strapped countries, helping buffer against droughts and floods, stabilise water supplies for farming, and reduce poverty. The project is applied, not fundamental science: it aims to deliver a practical tool that can be rolled out across sub-Saharan Africa, providing a template for other regions facing similar water challenges.
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Across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), approx. 75% of the population depend solely on groundwater for water supplies. Developing sustainable groundwater supplies in SSA is key to communities’ resilience, health & well-being and economic development. However, poorly managed over-exploitation of groundwater is causing degradation of crucial resources and leads to the urgent need for better groundwater monitoring. Furthermore, the increasingly erratic nature of rainfall patterns disrupts productivity of rain-fed agriculture, contributes to floods and droughts, and stalls economic growth. A key strategy to increase the resilience of water supplies is Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR), a water management option that provides a means of intentionally recharging and storing water underground for subsequent recovery and beneficial use. MAR provides an important buffer against the impacts of climate variability. However, the vast majority of African countries have not implemented MAR. Successful MAR schemes require a robust assessment of aquifer storage properties and ongoing monitoring of subsurface water storage at the catchment scale. But traditional aquifer testing and groundwater monitoring requires expensive borehole networks which are cost-prohibitive for many countries in SSA. The programme will jointly test and benchmark the integration of the new low-cost microgravity sensor technology for water resources management and in particular for MAR schemes with regional stakeholders from the water sector and communities in Burkina Faso, Kenya and South Africa. In doing so, improved resources management using the new low-cost sensor will contribute to building resilience and alleviating poverty in these countries and provide a template for other countries across SSA.
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