With Special Reference to Sub-Saharan Africa

Article prepared for FAO by Jorma Ruotsi

[R-1] During the past 50 years, the increasing emphasis on irrigation has been one of the major trends in agricultural development globally. As a result of massive investments in water development schemes, irrigation provides today supplementary water to one-fifth of the world's cultivated land, from which one-third of the food crop is harvested. Much of this investment has taken place in developing countries, and many of the world's poorest people are dependent on food produced on irrigated land.

[R-2] The peak in investment in irrigation was reached during the mid-1980s, when some USD 2,500 to 3,000 million were committed per year by external funding agencies globally. However, since the 1980s, total investments have substantially decreased. The World Bank is now investing less than USD 1,000 million per year in irrigation projects and total spending by all donors and financial institutions averages around USD 2,000 million per year. This development partly reflects the general decline in agricultural finance since the mid-1980s.

[R-3] However, there are also specific reasons for the declining trends in spending in irrigation. The rapid growth of irrigation and optimism over food production is being replaced by a more pragmatic evaluation of irrigation prospects. While some irrigation systems have operated successfully for long periods of time, high and increasing construction costs of the schemes, poor production performance of many irrigation systems, falling real prices of crops and concerns about negative environmental impacts of projects have significantly reduced the willingness of donors and international financial institutions to invest in irrigation activities. At the same time the increasingly tight financial position of many LDC governments has adversely affected their possibilities to raise funds for irrigation projects from local budgets.

[R-4] On the African continent, the total irrigated land is estimated to be about 12-13 million hectares. The importance of irrigation varies a great deal from country to country, and while Egypt has 99 percent of its cultivated land under irrigation, a large country like Zaïre has only 0.2 percent of its arable land under irrigation. Furthermore, a wide range of water management situations can be observed in Africa, from simple traditional ones to highly sophisticated full-control irrigation schemes. In many African countries, the absence of medium-sized, commercial operators means that irrigation systems are polarised between a few, large-scale government schemes and numerous very small-scale independent irrigators. The sharing of experience between these two types of irrigation systems has proved to be very difficult in most African countries.

[R-5] The problems experienced in many large and medium-scale irrigation schemes in Sub-Saharan African have raised the question whether irrigation schemes represent an appropriate policy solution in the African context. In Africa's more remote environments one often finds that many earlier irrigation projects have failed, that the environment itself is fragile, that transport costs are high, that implementation of an externally designed project will exacerbate social tensions, that marketing is poorly organised, and that the institutional capacity to manage irrigation is very limited. These factors would support the investment of scarce resources in Africa to other projects than irrigation systems.

[R-6] On the other hand, there are indications that the "second generation of water projects" in Africa can be more successful than the first one. The macro-economic climate has improved in many countries during the last 20 years, and the agricultural sector is less discriminated against through overvalued exchange rates, poor farm gate prices and other policies. Simple appropriate irrigation technology has become better known and expensive internationally designed schemes are becoming unnecessary. The importance of including the intended beneficiaries in the design and implementation of new projects is now more generally recognised, as is the need of realistic, uncomplicated project designs. The institutional capacity of governments, NGOs and the private sector to work together is improving. These factors would support continued investments in irrigation in Africa especially as without investment in water infrastructure, the prospects for increasing food production and improving food security are in many countries remote.

[R-7] The present paper addresses some major issues related to the financing of small-scale irrigation activities especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the context in which the irrigation activities are implemented varies to a very large extent from country to country, the focus of this paper in on general principles, concepts and especially trends that require attention when future irrigation schemes are planned. After receiving comments on issues raised through the internet conference, the paper will be finalised and extended to provide a more comprehensive picture of the subject.