Africa is the driest continent, right? After all, the biggest portion of it is nothing but desert, and more than 300 million people don't have access to the clean water they need. Scientists, however, are telling us that previous assumptions about the water resources of Africa are wrong. Although little water is to be found on the surface in many areas, there is an extensive reservoir of groundwater that's about 10 times larger than surface water areas which is just just waiting to be tapped. With growing populations and the increased need for crop production and irrigation, this is a resource that will need to be utilized in order to meet future needs.

Water reaches the ground as rain or snow. Some of it gives moisture to the soil in order to irrigate crops. Some of it runs straight into waterways. What's left soaks down into the soil and in between rocks where it's held in spaces between the rocks. Wet rocks such as this are called aquifers. Groundwater is in constant movement due to gravity and the water that falls in on top of it. This movement removes impurities in the water which often makes the groundwater cleaner than surface water sources. Now that scientists in Africa have been able to perform a groundwater analysis of the entire continent, they've discovered that the potential is enormous.

Especially worth noting is the huge amounts of groundwater located under the desert regions of Libya, Chad, and Algeria. As amazing as all this seems, we also need to realize that most of these water sources were last filled at least 5000 years ago. This planet we live on is an awesome place, and findings like this one can make us wonder what other surprises are still hidden within the earth.

Now that geologists are aware that the groundwater exists in areas where it's really needed, they're wondering about the best way of extracting it. General consensus has it that merely drilling a lot of boreholes without doing greater study into the exact make-up of the groundwater sources could damage the rock fields, so whatever they decide to do must be done with extreme caution. Some of the groundwater areas may not have unlimited supplies of water in them, and tapping into them could mean a rapid depletion of what the little that is there. With more exploration and careful construction, though, scientists do believe that people will be able to utilize this source of water to fulfill their own needs.

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