To understand where in Africa the risk of pesticide exposure is highest, information is required on (i) where pesticides are sprayed and (ii) where pesticide residuals subsequently accumulate. This is mainly due to illiteracy among farmers, lack of awareness about the danger of pesticide misuse, difficulties with extrapolating the prescribed pesticide dose ratio to the size of an agricultural field, and lack of knowledge on pests and diseases. Although the average pesticide use is still relatively low in Africa, the potential negative effects on human health and the environment are substantial. Pesticide application in Africa is projected to increase by 1.2 to 2.3 times due to economic and population growth and due to the few countries that have implemented regulations and legislations on pesticide application. It is known that agricultural pesticides are regularly being used in African farming systems. In this instance, agricultural pesticides have an indirect impact on human health by reducing the efficacy of insecticide-based interventions for disease control. Agricultural insecticides can also drive the spread of resistance in non-target insects that are involved in the transmission of human diseases such as malaria and dengue. For example, human exposure to toxic levels of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) can result in spontaneous abortion by women, carbamate and organophosphate in the environment can result in biodiversity loss, and there is evidence that pesticide exposure can play a role in neurodegenerative conditions like dementia and Parkinson’s disease. The environmental fate of agricultural pesticides can have direct and indirect impacts on human health and the environment. Despite the need for more in-situ data on pesticide residues and application, this study provides a first spatial overview of key processes affecting pesticide fate that can be used to identify areas potentially vulnerable to pesticide accumulation. The database contains 10,076 observations, but only a limited number of observations remained when a standard dataset for one compound was extracted for validation. We then compiled a database of studies that measured pesticide residues in Africa. The potential and limitations of these maps are discussed. Key geospatial processes affecting the environmental fate of agricultural pesticides were selected after a review of pesticide fate models and maps for leaching, surface runoff, sedimentation, soil storage and filtering capacity, and volatilization were created. The study modelled processes associated with the environmental fate of agricultural pesticides using publicly available geospatial datasets. The aim of this study was to identify African environments that are vulnerable to the accumulation of pesticides by mapping geospatial processes affecting pesticide fate. The application of agricultural pesticides in Africa can have negative effects on human health and the environment.
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