Climate Change VS other factors

Would the impacts of CC on water balance outweigh other factors (e.g. Land use/cover change or demographic change) ?

While researching for climate change impacts on African water, I have found an interesting study by Favreau et al. (2009); it explores about different factors (apart from CC) that might have affected the water system in Africa, using a case study of Southwestern Niger. 

Southwestern part of Niger experienced rising water table for past few decades (1963 - 2007) despite a deficit in monsoonal rainfall from 1970 to 1998 (Favreau et al., 2009). Such 'paradoxical phenomenon' is related with changes in land use, mainly from natural savannah to millet crops since 1950s - which expanded by six times. Changes in land use caused soil crusting on slopes, enhancing the Hortonian runoff. Consequently runoff concentrates in closed ponds, leading to aquifer recharges. 

In order to investigate the factors affected such consequences in detail, the study used three different scaled methods: 
     First, a physically based distributed hydrological model in local scale (2 km2) revealed that land clearing happened in 1950s are has increased the runoff by threefold while rainfall deficit decreased runoff by twofold. 
     A larger scale (500 km2) historical aerial photographs between 1950 and 1992 showed an increase in the gully densities by factor of 2.5 in response to a 80% decrease in perennial vegetation. 
    Lastly, a entire study area-scale (5000 km2) analytical modelling of groundwater radioisotope data illustrated that recharge rate before the land clearing was approximately 2mm a􏰧-1, while it was about 2± 7 mm a􏰧-1 after the clearing. 

Hence, in the case of southwestern Niger, impacts of land use change on water balance were much greater than the direct influence of climate variability. 
     Yet, this study does not directly address the 'climate change' aspects related to climate variability, it is interesting to see how land use change can affect the water balance system in the area - varying in scale. Also, the study area was well equipped with appropriate information to conduct detailed study, which many parts of Africa lack still.