Podcasts › PIDG Pulse › #25 Africa’s Water Challenge – And The Solar-Powered Solution

#25 Africa’s Water Challenge – And The Solar-Powered Solution

25 August 2025

Smallholder farmers contribute massively to Africa’s food security. But with increasingly unreliable rainfall in the region, they regularly face droughts and floods, leading to crop loss and widespread hunger.

As global temperatures continue to rise, one solution is helping the region to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Through its project development solution, InfraCo, PIDG is supporting the growth of SunCulture, a business that’s working to scale access to solar powered irrigation systems for thousands of farmers across Africa. PIDG has also provided SunCulture with technical assistance funding.

This year’s World Water Week theme is ‘Water for climate action.’ In this special episode, we discover the true extent of the water issues facing people in Africa today, and what will happen if we don’t get these under control. We find out why irrigation is such a vital piece of the puzzle in improving Africa’s food security, and the work being done behind the scenes to ensure sustainable water management for the future. And we hear directly from some smallholder farmers whose livelihoods have been transformed by SunCulture’s renewable technology.

Our guests are:

Samir Ibrahim, CEO and Co-Founder at SunCulture
Petra Schmitter, Research Group Leader – Climate Mitigation & Adaptation Pathways at the International Water Management Institute
Zena Njuki, Technical Assistance Manager at PIDG

Your host is Marcel Klebba, Communications Manager at PIDG.

Learn more about PIDG on our website, pidg.org.

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