Kenya’s plan to double its irrigated farmland and expand mining is pushing groundwater systems past what current management can handle. The problem is that no one has a reliable way to track how fast water levels are dropping, how pollution spreads, or what happens when rural communities lose access to clean supplies. This project builds the first automated, daily monitoring network for shallow groundwater—anywhere in the world—and pairs it with a risk management tool designed to be used by African institutions, not imported from elsewhere. It also links faulty water supplies to specific health outcomes, giving governments epidemiological data they currently lack. If it works, the tool could let planners see trade-offs in real time: whether drilling a new well for irrigation will drain a village’s drinking source, or whether a mining permit will poison a downstream aquifer. The research is applied by design, but it also advances fundamental understanding of how groundwater governance and poverty interact—knowledge that could reshape water policy across the continent.
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Improved understanding of groundwater risks and institutional responses against competing growth and development goals is central to accelerating and sustaining Africa's development. Africa's groundwater systems are a critical but poorly understood socio-ecological system. Explosive urban growth, irrigated agricultural expansion, industrial pollution, untapped mineral wealth, rural neglect and environmental risks often converge to increase the complexity and urgency of governance challenges across Africa's groundwater systems. These Africa-wide opportunities and trade-offs are reflected in Kenya where the government's unifying Vision 2030 aims to double the irrigated agricultural area whilst simultaneously promoting the growth of high-value mineral resources. Institutional capacity to govern interactions between economic activities, water resource demands and poverty outcomes are currently constrained by insufficient knowledge and lack of effective management tools. The overarching project aim is to design, test and transfer a novel, interdisciplinary and replicable Groundwater Risk Management tool to improve governance transformations to balance economic growth, groundwater sustainability and human development trade-offs. The project will make four major contributions to support interdisciplinary science and governance of managing groundwater risks for growth and development in Africa: a) An automated, daily monitoring network for shallow groundwater levels - the first system of its kind in the world and replicable at scale. b) A new Groundwater Risk Management Tool which is transferable and sustainable in Africa. c) New epidemiological insights into the health impacts of faulty or intermittent water supplies. d) Improved theory and evidence of groundwater governance and poverty pathways.
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