Policy Note: Expanding Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Soumya Balasubramanya () and Uma Lele
Additional contact information
Soumya Balasubramanya: International Water Management, Institute — CGIAR, 127, Sunil Mawatha, Pelawatte, Battaramulla, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Uma Lele: International Association of Agricultural Economists, 411 Richmond Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, ON M5A 3S5, Canada3Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, University Enclave, University of Delhi, (North Campus), New Delhi 110007, Delhi NCT, India4Independent Scholar, Washington, DC, USA

Water Economics and Policy (WEP), 2022, vol. 08, issue 01, 1-14

Abstract: Policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa have placed considerable emphasis on expanding irrigated agriculture. This is in response to the subcontinent’s growing population pressure, coupled with production risks associated with declining and variable rainfall. Irrigation is viewed as an important strategy to improve food security and protect rural livelihoods, with small-scale irrigation identified as the preferred strategy. And yet, adoption of irrigation has been slow, and irrigation investments are often underutilized. Expanding irrigated agriculture through increases in cultivated area alone will not be sufficient for greater food security; land and water productivity of irrigated agriculture needs to be increased, and this may in fact help accelerate the adoption of irrigation. Shared irrigation investments among small farmers are going to be challenging to sustain as smallholder households diversify their livelihoods, and do not cultivate field crops every season. For individual irrigation technologies, many barriers exist in their adoption, especially the risks and ambiguities such as pestilence and borehole installation failures; and governments will have to invest significantly more than they currently do in research and extension efforts to ease these barriers. Finally, the expansion of irrigation, especially individual irrigation, will likely create environmental challenges such as aquifer depletion, water pollution, and soil degradation, which governments would also have to manage by coordinating the actions of individual smallholders. This paper identifies the kind of institutional infrastructure and policy support that African agriculture will need to have in place to expand irrigation beyond its current status.

Keywords: Irrigation; expansion; climate change; barriers; countervailing risks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2382624X2171003X
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:wsi:wepxxx:v:08:y:2022:i:01:n:s2382624x2171003x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X2171003X

Access Statistics for this article

Water Economics and Policy (WEP) is currently edited by Ariel Dinar

More articles in Water Economics and Policy (WEP) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().