Africa is the second driest continent after Australia and experiences frequent droughts resulting in livelihood and food insecurity. Africa also has abundant undeveloped land and water resources. Estimates show that 597m ha of land in Africa has soil characteristics suitable for surface irrigation. Currently, about 12m ha are developed and equipped for irrigation, constituting about 8 percent of cultivated area compared to 37% for Asia and 14% for Latin America. Globally, irrigated agriculture produces about 40% of food and agricultural commodities, compared to only 10% in Sub-Saharan Africa. On average the irrigated area has grown at only 1.2 percent annually in Africa. Eighty-five percent of Africa’s poor depend largely on agriculture for livelihoods and live in rural areas where irrigation can make a difference by doubling yields and making production more stable than the prevalent rain-fed production. Therefore, in Africa, smallholder irrigation can make a significant impact on livelihoods and food security.
Smallholder irrigation is often cited as a potential development option in Africa. The low levels of irrigation development in Africa, in general, certainly gives some credence to the assertion. There are many reasons cited for the lack of irrigation development in Africa, among which the cost of irrigation development ranks highly. It is often mentioned that the cost of irrigation development in Africa is higher than in other parts of the world such as Asia, where irrigation played a pivotal role in the Green Revolution. However, the evidence of the high cost of irrigation development is at best scanty. This lack of evidence in support of smallholder irrigation is pervasive in Africa but has not deterred many African countries from using, irrigation development, in general, and smallholder irrigation development in particular as the strategy for spearheading rural development, thus putting smallholder irrigation at the center stage. This situation calls for the need to thoroughly investigate the key issues that affect the performance of smallholder irrigation, including accurate performance parameters that should be made readily available for use by policy and development decision makers.
The performance of smallholder irrigation can be analyzed from different perspectives. It is multidimensional and includes agricultural and horticultural production, rural livelihoods, poverty, food and water security, crop-water relations, productivity, use of treated/untreated wastewater, maintenance of water quantity and quality, and adaptation and creation of resilience towards global change. Within this scope and with reference to smallholder irrigation, the following themes will be covered:
-The cost of developing irrigation in Africa compared to other regions
-The barriers/enablers of irrigation development
-The challenges/constraints of irrigation development
-Institutional frameworks and governance related to irrigation development
-Livelihoods impacts of irrigation development
-Relative merits of different irrigation systems for smallholders
-Irrigation performance (productivity, water use efficiency, and water application timeliness)
Africa is the second driest continent after Australia and experiences frequent droughts resulting in livelihood and food insecurity. Africa also has abundant undeveloped land and water resources. Estimates show that 597m ha of land in Africa has soil characteristics suitable for surface irrigation. Currently, about 12m ha are developed and equipped for irrigation, constituting about 8 percent of cultivated area compared to 37% for Asia and 14% for Latin America. Globally, irrigated agriculture produces about 40% of food and agricultural commodities, compared to only 10% in Sub-Saharan Africa. On average the irrigated area has grown at only 1.2 percent annually in Africa. Eighty-five percent of Africa’s poor depend largely on agriculture for livelihoods and live in rural areas where irrigation can make a difference by doubling yields and making production more stable than the prevalent rain-fed production. Therefore, in Africa, smallholder irrigation can make a significant impact on livelihoods and food security.
Smallholder irrigation is often cited as a potential development option in Africa. The low levels of irrigation development in Africa, in general, certainly gives some credence to the assertion. There are many reasons cited for the lack of irrigation development in Africa, among which the cost of irrigation development ranks highly. It is often mentioned that the cost of irrigation development in Africa is higher than in other parts of the world such as Asia, where irrigation played a pivotal role in the Green Revolution. However, the evidence of the high cost of irrigation development is at best scanty. This lack of evidence in support of smallholder irrigation is pervasive in Africa but has not deterred many African countries from using, irrigation development, in general, and smallholder irrigation development in particular as the strategy for spearheading rural development, thus putting smallholder irrigation at the center stage. This situation calls for the need to thoroughly investigate the key issues that affect the performance of smallholder irrigation, including accurate performance parameters that should be made readily available for use by policy and development decision makers.
The performance of smallholder irrigation can be analyzed from different perspectives. It is multidimensional and includes agricultural and horticultural production, rural livelihoods, poverty, food and water security, crop-water relations, productivity, use of treated/untreated wastewater, maintenance of water quantity and quality, and adaptation and creation of resilience towards global change. Within this scope and with reference to smallholder irrigation, the following themes will be covered:
-The cost of developing irrigation in Africa compared to other regions
-The barriers/enablers of irrigation development
-The challenges/constraints of irrigation development
-Institutional frameworks and governance related to irrigation development
-Livelihoods impacts of irrigation development
-Relative merits of different irrigation systems for smallholders
-Irrigation performance (productivity, water use efficiency, and water application timeliness)
