**2.3. Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)**

**Figure 5.** Current and projected populations of the world by region [49–51].

**2.2. Environmental refugees**

12 Applications in Water Systems Management and Modeling

that Europe may see further waves of SSA migrants coming to the advanced economies, and it is almost unquestionable that SSA migrants arriving Europe will have significant implications to the service delivery systems in place in Europe, particularly in Italy, that represents the major transit hub for SSA migrants. Likewise, other major destinations of SSA migrants include Indonesia, where in recent years migrants from several SSA countries including Sudan and Somalia as well as other migrants from other Asian countries such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are used as a major transit hub on their way to Australia.

**Figure 4.** Average annual temperatures of Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Niger 1901–2015.

Climate change factors such as changing rainfall and temperature have impacted rural communities of SSA and limited people's ability to establish a meaningful livelihood from their lands [52]. Norman [53] reported that the environmental refugee phenomenon emerged during twentieth century and environmental refugees are defined as *people who are forced to leave their original habitat because of some sort of environmental difficulty* [54]. As noted in [55], the term "environmental refugees" was first used by Essam El-Hinnawi in 1985 where he defined environmental refugees as *"those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life*" [56]. Since 1985, researchers and experts in the people migration field have developed similar definitions

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also referred as Zaire, locates in the African Great Lakes region of Central Africa and borders with nine Sub-Saharan African countries namely Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Congo-Brazzaville. DRC is the largest country in SSA and has 2.34 million km<sup>2</sup> of land and considered to have large deposits of many natural resources such as oil, diamonds, copper and cobalt. Moreover, DRC is also known to as Africa's water rich country, it holds 23 and 52% of Africa's internal renewable water resources and surface water reserves, respectively [60]. DRC is the third most populated country in SSA after Nigeria and Ethiopia. Similar to most of SSA countries, the DRC population is growing fast and increased from 16.2 million in 1962 to about 69.57 million in 2012 [61]. A significant composition change in the population was noted where in 2012 around 45% of the DRC population was below the age of 15 years and only about 3% of the population was 65 years and over. In contrast, poverty is widespread in DRC and about 60% of the population lives below the poverty line (\$1.25/day), and it is ranked as one of the world's poorest countries and positions number 186 out of 186 countries also co-held by Niger another in SSA country [62]. Two-thirds the country falls to the south of the Equator and one-third to the north [63]. The climate in DRC is cool and dry in the southern highlands with a cold, alpine climate in the Rwenzori Mountains and hot and humid in the river basin [64]. South of the Equator, the rainy season starts in October and lasts until May and in the north of the Equator, rain starts April and continues until November. In addition to this, rainfall is fairly regular throughout the year along the Equator [65]. The annual average rainfall in DRC ranges from 1000 to 1700 mm and average annual temperatures ranges 18–32°C. DRC experiences periodic climatic events such as seasonal flooding in the east and droughts in the south. These events are may be directly related to the significant variations of the rainfall in DRC abundance or lack of precipitation.

Marshall [71] reported that the annual rainfall in Mt. Kenya reached 1800 mm and that the rainfall in the northern regions of the country is below 200 mm. Rainfed agriculture is the

The Effects of Climate Change on Rural-Urban Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)—The…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72226

15

Niger is another West African country used in this study. The country borders with Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali and Nigeria. Country has around 1.3 million km<sup>2</sup> of land and 15% of arable land [61]. It had a population of about 17.15 million in 2012 [72]. Niger is one the fastest growing countries in SSA in terms of population. The World Bank [72] reported that the population has quintupled within five decades, increasing from 3.33 million in 1960 to 17.15 million in 2012. Beside this population growth, Niger is the poorest country in the world out of 186 countries and positions the 186th place with DRC [62]. Approximately 61% of the population is classified as poor and live with less than \$1/day. In line with other SSA countries, agriculture remains the dominant sector of the economy and accounts for 39% of the GDP in the year 2009. This means that agricultural production levels have significant impact to the annual economic growth. In fact, economic growth in Niger has been highly volatile due to the unfavourable farming conditions. EPRI [73] has noted that the economic growth rates were 3.2, 9.3 and −1.2% in 2007, 2008 and 2009, respectively. Climate change implications have affected Niger and the two main factors that affect the agricultural production are desertification and frequent drought conditions [73]. On the contrary to other SSA countries, during the past 50 years urban population has been growing slowly in Niger, while the rural population increased considerably during the same period. For the past 40 years Niger has experienced a 0.6°C increase of the average temperature with a declining annual average rainfall. Niger has total internal renewable water resources (TRWR) of 3.5 km<sup>3</sup>

appears to have an inverse relationship to the rapidly growing population. Niger withdraws around 2.9% of the actual renewable water resources per year and this has affected the pressure on freshwater withdrawal. In contrast to other SSA countries, Niger has higher percentages of people with access to clean water. In 2015, 100% of people living in urban areas and 48.6% of rural populations had access to clean water sources in Niger. In fact, 58.2% of the

Three Sub-Saharan African countries were selected to test how climate change factors and population growth have impacted people movement (rural-urban migration). The Sub-Saharan African countries involved in this study are Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya (KEN) and Niger (NER). The data collected was over 56 year period from 1960 to 2015. The climate change proxy variable (rainfall and temperature) and the data were collected on monthly bases from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of USA,

; the

/yr in 2014, this

/yr in 1962 to 183 m<sup>3</sup>

major contributor of the Kenyan economy as to the most of SSA countries [71].

TRWR per capita has dropped considerably from 973 m<sup>3</sup>

total population has access to clean water in Niger.

**3. Methodology**

**3.1. Data sources and procedures**

**2.5. Niger**

AGRA [24] and Chijioke et al. [44, 48] reported that the average temperature is increasing in the Sub-Saharan African region. They also noted that climate change is already affecting agriculture and production levels. Between 1980 and 2000, the temperature records from the majority of weather stations in the SSA sub regions revealed progressive warming. In line to these conditions, food security appears to be a major concern in DRC. There have been constant food insecurities in as much of DRC's rural communities and this may have resulted people movement from rural to urban areas. According to Alinovi et al. [66], the number of undernourished people in DRC has tripled from 12 to 36 million, and the prevalence increased from 31 to 72% of the population. In 2002, about 80% of the Congolese population lived below the poverty line of around US\$0.2 per day [67]. Climate change also causes major events in DRC, for example, between 1974 and 2003, 19 natural disasters were recorder in DRC. Lukamba [68] noted that the Congo River of 4700 km length crosses the country from East to West and its water levels have been increasing steadily and posed risk to communities on its path including the 12 million people living in the capital Kinshasa. DRC is considered to be one of the most vulnerable and affected countries natural disasters. In some occasions, these climatic conditions trigger communities to mobilize and move to other locations seeking better food security conditions. In the following section, people movement in rural and urban areas as well as rainfall and temperature in DRC will be analysed and changes on these factors will be predicted in the next decade.

#### **2.4. Kenya**

Kenya is situated in the Eastern Africa region and borders Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and the Indian Ocean. Kenya has a 582,646 km<sup>2</sup> of land including 11,230 km<sup>2</sup> of water covered land. About 16% of Kenya's land is potentially suitable for agriculture, where 84% of the land is arid and semi-arid that is suitable for livestock or irrigated agriculture [69]. Kenya has dry and humid climates; that is probably the reason Kenya experiences critical water crisis. In Kenya, there has been a high variability of rainfall in terms of time and place and hence this had undesirably affected agricultural production. Presently Kenya is under water scarcity situation and the renewable fresh water per capita is 718.1 m<sup>3</sup> /yr [61] stating that total internal renewable water resources per capita has dropped from 3558 m3 /yr in 1962 to 484.2 m3 /yr in 2011. Not surprisingly, it is predicted that the renewable freshwater per capita in Kenya will fall to 235 m<sup>3</sup> /yr by the year 2025. UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) has announced the water crisis in Kenya as critical water scarce [70]. Kenya had a population of around 41 million in 2010 and it has been growing rapidly [71]. Nyanchaga [69] noted that Kenyan population has increased from 5.4 million in 1948 to 42 million in 2011. Rainfall in Kenya is highly variable and the annual average rainfall in the country is 630 mm. Marshall [71] reported that the annual rainfall in Mt. Kenya reached 1800 mm and that the rainfall in the northern regions of the country is below 200 mm. Rainfed agriculture is the major contributor of the Kenyan economy as to the most of SSA countries [71].
