WATER SCARCITY AND FOOD SECURITY: THE ROLE OF VIRTUAL WATER FLOWS IN CEREALS TRADE IN THE NORTH AFRICA COUNTRIES ندرة المياه و الأمن الغذائي: دور التجارة الافتراضية لمياه محاصيل الحبوب في دول الشمال الأفريقي

North Africa is one of the driest regions in the world. Consequently, all countries in the region depend mainly on agricultural imports to achieve the food security. The present study endeavor to estimate: firstly, the national and the global water saving achieved through the North African international cereal trade by using the concept of virtual water trade. Secondly, the relation between the imports of cereal trade, as endogenous variable, and the available  water resources availability with other important factors as exogenous variables.
The results showed that, at the national level, all North African countries achieved water saves to the extent that exceed the endowment total fresh water resources in Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia.  Importing  of maize and wheat is the most important player of the saving  national water imports of among the cereal crops. All countries in the North Africa region achieved water saving except Egypt.
The model results has  shown statistically significant coefficients of factors affecting the total imports of cereal crops such as, per-capita fresh water resources, the area of irrigated water, the  area of Arable land . the negative sing of per-capita  fresh water resources indicates that the importing cereals using intensive water is not optional decision but due to the shortage of the available of water resources  . Negative signs of  irrigated area and of arable land are consistent indicating that the increasing of the irrigated area and the arable land will intuitively reduce the importing of cereals.