A systematic scoping review of irrigation development and agricultural water management in South Africa

Mabhaudhi, T.; Dirwai, Tinashe L.; Taguta, C.; Kanda, E. K.; Nhamo, L.; Cofie, Olufunke.

from International Water Management Institute

Abstract: An estimated 80% of Africa’s population depends on agriculture; hence, efficient agricultural water management (AWM) is crucial for enhancing agricultural and water productivity and building climate resilience across different farming scales to ensure food security. Approximately 90% of sub-Saharan Africa’s agriculture is rain-fed, and the bulk of the farmers are classified as smallholder farmers, constituting 70% of the continent’s population. Climate change (CC) and climate variability (CV) have increasingly imposed yield penalties on Africa’s irrigated and non-irrigated farming sectors. This has put significant pressure on the African farmer to produce more on less water. As such, the African Union (AU), through the AU-Irrigation Development and Agricultural Water Management (AU-IDAWM) framework, proposed four IDAWM pathways as potential countermeasures to yield penalties. Despite inroads made to equip the African farmer with extension services, a dearth of information related to performance challenges faced in the continent’s irrigation fraternity exists. This information is vital as a feedback loop to identify opportunities, challenges, and potential investment gaps to boost irrigation development in the continent. Therefore, using a South African case study, this research sought to assess the existing knowledge, gaps, challenges, and opportunities related to irrigation development and agricultural water management. PRISMA-P protocols guided the study. The SPIDER (Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, and Research type) framework informed the eligibility criteria, which we used to formulate the inclusion–exclusion criteria. The different AU-IDAWM exhibited varied developments in infrastructural and governance structures. The AWM practices exhibited overlaps than variances under the rain-fed, FLID, and modernisation pathways.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Food Policy; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Farm Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/369140/files/978-981-96-1848-4.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iwmibc:369140

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.369140

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Book Chapters from International Water Management Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().