Afristar

01/04/2026

Water Sedimentation is the silent infrastructure crisis in South Africa’s dams.
Nobody talks about it until the dam is half full.
Every major dam has a sedimentation rate, and many are losing usable storage faster than new capacity is being built. The cause is upstream: degraded catchments, eroded soils, and unmanaged land use.
The evidence is already in the system.
Collywobbles Dam has lost around 90% of its storage capacity due to siltation.
Yet in the same Mzimvubu River catchment, we are planning and investing in two new dams — with combined storage in the hundreds of millions of cubic metres.
Modelling already shows those dams could lose 35–44% of their lifespan without upstream intervention.
So what exactly are we building?
Because this isn’t just an engineering challenge — it’s a systems failure.
We continue to fund infrastructure downstream, while underinvesting in the upstream landscapes that determine whether that infrastructure works at all.
Until that changes, we are not solving the problem.
We are recreating it.
How should water resource economics account for upstream catchment condition?





Sedimentation in Welbedacht Dam, Free State Province image from South African National Committee on Large Dams (SANCOLD)

31/03/2026

Keyline design is 70 years old and still underused in Africa.
The concept is simple: contour-based earthworks that guide water across a landscape from natural drainage lines outward toward ridges, reversing the tendency of water to concentrate in valleys and run off.
The result is even moisture distribution across the whole farm, rapid topsoil building, and the elimination of erosion without terracing.
Developed by Australian farmer P.A. Yeomans in the 1950s. Applied successfully across arid, semi-arid, and tropical landscapes.
In degraded communal areas in the Eastern Cape this is not a nice-to-have. It's foundational restoration infrastructure.
Who is using keyline principles in Southern African restoration work?







Image from Redemption Permaculture

24/03/2026

🌍 “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.” — Herman Daly
This powerful truth hits even harder when you look at watershed restoration. Healthy landscapes deliver real returns: better water security, richer soil, higher farm yields, and lower infrastructure costs — often paying for themselves within a decade.
The financing tools already exist (blended finance, green bonds, carbon markets), yet watershed restoration remains chronically underfunded.
The missing piece isn’t evidence — it’s treating healthy landscapes as the valuable asset class they truly are.
A solvable problem.
What’s stopping us?

23/03/2026

"Water is a living substance. It wants to work with us, not for us." — Viktor Schauberger
A spring that runs year-round is worth more than a borehole.
When catchments degrade, springs dry up. When catchments recover, they return. Zero maintenance. Gravity fed. Climate responsive.
We build boreholes in landscapes where springs could be restored for a fraction of the cost.
Anyone familiar with Schauberger's work and how it applies to water management in Africa?

19/03/2026

The R40 billion projected domestic industrial cannabis market by 2040 rests on one infrastructure assumption that is currently false.
According to the LSF H**p Industrialisation Study published last year, domestic demand is already at R7.3 billion. The projection to R40.4 billion by 2040 assumes growing production capabilities, cost efficiencies, and decarbonisation demand. The study identifies the same binding constraint I've been writing about: the absence of community-scale decortication infrastructure, what it calls the missing middle.
Processing capacity exists at industrial scale. It does not exist at community scale.
Without accessible decorticators, smallholder farmers in the Eastern Cape cannot enter the formal fibre market. They grow the crop but cannot unlock its value.
This is a classic blended finance opportunity. Development capital de-risks the asset. Offtake agreements create revenue predictability. Cooperatives own the equipment and capture the margin.
The market projection is real. The infrastructure gap is real. That makes it fundable.
Who is working on community-scale decortication in South Africa?

The Localisation Support Fund (LSF), in partnership with the Presidency, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), commissioned a landmark study to assess the feasibility of building a competitive industrial h**p sector in South A...

18/03/2026

Five things the degraded communal landscapes of Southern Africa keep teaching:

Soil compaction is the first problem. Everything else flows from it. Livestock managed well restore land.
Livestock managed poorly destroy it. The animal isn't the problem.
Springs return when catchments recover. This still surprises people.
The best early indicator of landscape health is grass species diversity, not grass cover.
Communities already know most of what needs to be done. The gap is usually capital and coordination, not knowledge.

What would you add?







Picture Credit Renée Verhoeven

17/03/2026

South Africa's largest undammed river basin is one of its most degraded.
That is not a contradiction. That's an opportunity.
Undammed systems retain something dammed systems have lost: the capacity to heal. Intact sediment cycles. Functional riparian corridors. Hydrological connectivity. These things can regenerate faster than expected when pressure is reduced and the right design is applied.
The restoration science is solid. The governance and capital structures to back it at scale are still catching up.
That's the gap worth closing.
What role do you think Catchment Management Agencies should play in mobilising restoration investment?

16/03/2026

The economics of watershed restoration are well documented.
Reduced infrastructure maintenance. Increased agricultural productivity. Stabilised water yield. Soil carbon sequestration.
The returns are measurable and in many cases exceed the cost of restoration within a decade.
The financing instruments exist too. Blended finance. Green bonds. NRM co-funding. Carbon markets. Development finance.
So why is watershed restoration chronically underfunded?
The gap is not in the evidence base. It's in how proposals are structured, and in whether development finance knows how to underwrite landscape condition as an asset class.
That's a solvable problem. What's stopping us?
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Image Sukhmani Mantel, Rhodes University

13/03/2026

Rural communities are not beneficiaries of development.
They are the development plan.
The most durable rural interventions happen when communities own the design process, the governance structure, and the economic infrastructure that comes from it. Not as stakeholders who get consulted. As rights-holders who hold the plan.
Community-Based Natural Resource Management done properly is not a participation mechanism. It's a sovereignty model. When a village holds the CBNRM plan, they hold the ecological rights, the management responsibilities, and the claim to the economic benefits.
That's a different kind of development.
What's your experience of CBNRM in practice versus how it's written up in proposals?

image from WWF Namibia

11/03/2026

"You have to plant the water before you plant the trees."
This is the most useful single sentence in regenerative land management.
Before any reforestation. Before food forests or cover crops. Before anything.
Get the water system right first. Design earthworks that slow rainfall, spread it across the landscape, and sink it into the soil. Create the moisture conditions that make everything else viable.
Skip this step and you plant. You wait. You replant.
Get it right and the landscape starts doing the work for you.
What design principle do you keep coming back to in the field?

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