Investing in Irrigation for Agriculture Productivity in Africa

Pictured here is a tea field in Ethiopia. Photo courtesy of Rod Waddington via Flickr Commons. 

In the past, many believed that only large-scale irrigation projects were viable in Africa in order to provide higher returns on investment and drive agricultural productivity growth. However, World Bank estimates show that on average, the internal rate of returns of investment in small-scale irrigation projects is about 26 percent as compared to 17 percent for large-scale projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reported a 28 percent internal rate of returns for investment in small-scale systems, but for 7 percent large-scale systems. But deciding which type of irrigation system is best-suited for a particular country is not easy. Ultimately, it depends on several factors, including geo-ecological conditions, budget constraints, productivity gains, and economic cost and benefits. Beyond ensuring the economic viability of investment projects, addressing issues relating to institutional and governance frameworks is important and must be taken care of the ensure sustainability of projects. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that management challenges and land tenure issues that account for the slow investment in irrigation infrastructure development are equally considered.

Historically, the countries that have managed to increase agricultural productivity on farms are those that have successfully attracted both private and public investment in irrigation infrastructure. The Green Revolution that occurred in Latin America and Asia emphasized the transformational role that irrigation plays to boost agricultural productivity. According to IFPRI Africa can potentially boost productivity by up to 50 percent through irrigation, and India demonstrates that massive public investment in irrigation is one of the key factors that contributed to its agriculture productivity growth. For instance, Fugile reports that irrigation in drylands increases yields by 91 percent. Furthermore, an irrigated agriculture system enables multiple crop production seasons per year and allows for crop production on drylands, which are known to account for about three-quarters of the agricultural land in Africa. Additionally, irrigation allows farmers to diversify their production, expanding into high-level crops, which require regular usage of water. Perhaps of even greater importance is that irrigation is known to enhance the adoption of other productivity increasing inputs, such as fertilizer and hybrid seeds since the performance of these inputs depends on a regular supply of water.

Africa is endowed with an abundance of water resources, and therefore has an enormous potential to expand its irrigation systems if these resources are put to better use. Unfortunately, irrigation only plays a minor role in Africa's agriculture sector; about 95 percent of farms dependent on rainfall, which is highly variable and unpredictable and, climate change has tended to reduce rainfall available and exacerbate uncertainties. For more than half a century, the level of cultivated, irrigated area has seen little improvement and varies by country and sub-region. Between 1960 and 2007, the amount of irrigated land increased from 7.4 million hectares to 13.3 million hectares, primarily in Northern Africa and South Africa. The regional average of cropland irrigated in Africa is less than 10 percent, in comparison to 39 percent in South Asia. Estimates show that Africa has the potential to irrigate about 42.5 million hectares of the total agricultural land due to the available land and water resources with the greatest potential found in Nigeria, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania. This demonstrates that all is not lost, and with the right policies, strategies, and planning, the gap between the actual and potential irrigated agricultural land can be closed.

To maximize the potential benefit of water resources on the continent, it is imperative that Africa strengthen the management and governance of all major sources of water, including ground, surface, and rainwater. Further, maximizing potential requires a policy environment that assures affordable and appropriate technology for the majority of smallholder farmers, who account for about 80 percent of the farming population in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Thankfully, the past decade has brought some improvement to the development of irrigation in Africa. There are a few African countries beginning to promote irrigation and drainage systems in their agricultural transformation strategies. For example, the government of Ethiopia has introduced a policy for farm households to access at least on water resource source option in the country for irrigation purpose and as a strategy to help farming households adapt to climate change. At the continental level, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework, pillar 1 for investment and action to increase agricultural productivity proposes a high level of political will focused towards land, water, and irrigation. This framework understands that investment in irrigation is vital to increasing farm productivity to ultimately ensure food security.

Research conducted by the African Center for Economic Transformation on irrigation for agricultural transformation that seeks to mediate between large-scale and small-scale irrigation systems, concluded that Africa should support both scales of irrigation schemes, because of the diverse potential to develop irrigation systems. To make sure that such a balance is achieved, private sector investment must be promoted through the already existing public-private partnerships arrangement. However, since Africa has a large population of vulnerable smallholder farmers (with an average farm size of 2.3 hectares), small-scale irrigation systems appear to be a more viable option for increasing farm productivity. Correspondingly, several research surveys by International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and IFPRI  similarly concluded that small-scale irrigation systems are the future for Africa's agriculture.

The good news is that in some countries, the development of various forms of small-scale, community-owned systems of irrigation is already happening. For example, in Ghana, small, private irrigation has been found to cover 25 times more land than the public, large-scale systems. However, in the attempt to attract investment towards irrigation development, governments must recognize that such investment affects the natural resource base and must be taken care of to ensure sustainability.

Francis Abebrese is an economist by profession and is currently an Economic and Research Analyst at the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) where he serves as the Research Coordinator for ACET's flagship program — the African Transformation Report. He was previously a Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholar in 2017.