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Kenya
Area equipped for irrigation is 103 203 ha [KE01]. The figures refer to year 2003. The irrigated area per province is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Kenya irrigation areas in PDF or Kenya irrigation areas in Excel.
The irrigated was first assigned to projects as indicated by the FAO project database [KE02] and additionally 20 ha of irrigated area was assigned to projects identified by using a map of irrigation schemes [KE03]. The remaining area was distributed to areas that were classified by AFRICOVER as irrigated, rice or coffee [KE04] or as irrigated by the IGAD land use data base [KE05]. Additionally irrigated area was digitized from satellite imagery [KE06] for some areas where irrigation is known to be practised (map in [KE01]). This procedure worked fine for six of the eight provinces. For the Western province only 563 ha irrigated area were reported by the statistics but according to the geographical records there should be much more. The FAO project database lists three projects of together 1 685 ha irrigated land for this province and additionally 98 schemes were identified on the map of irrigation schemes in Kenya. Thus we would expect to find about 4 000 ha irrigated area there. However, to be consistent to the statistics it was decided to distribute 421 ha to the three large projects derived from the FAO project database (25 percent of their command area) and the remaining irrigated area was distributed to the 98 small scale schemes (about 1.4 ha to each of them). In contrast, the statistics reported 5 803 ha irrigated area for the North Eastern province, while no schemes could be identified there. Because there is also no irrigated land, rice or coffee according to AFRICOVER or irrigated land according to the IGAD land use, it was decided to distribute the irrigated area over other cultivated land as derived from AFRICOVER [KE07].
Area actually irrigated was 94 percent (97 011 ha) of area equipped for irrigation in year 2003 while 1 percent of the area equipped for irrigation was irrigated with groundwater [KE01].
References
[KE01]: FAO. 2006. AQUASTAT country profile Kenya. FAO, Rome, http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/aglw/aquastat/countries/index.stm, 06/10/2010.
[KE02]: FAO. 1987 (updated in 2005). Irrigated areas in Africa. FAO, Rome, Italy.
[KE03]: Unknown. Irrigation schemes in Kenya. Map available in the AQUASTAT-library.
[KE04]: FAO. 2005. AFRICOVER, Kenya - Spatially Aggregated Multipurpose Landcover database, FAO, Rome, Italy, http://www.africover.org, 13/12/2004.
[KE05]: Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Land use classification of Kenya. http://www.igad-data.org/, 14/07/2008.
[KE06]: Earth Satellite Corporation, 2004. Landsat GeoCover (2000/ETM+) Edition Mosaics, tiles 071-266, 071-281, 071-698 and 071-705. Sioux Falls, USA, USGS (available at http://glcfapp.umiacs.umd.edu:8080/esdi/index.jsp).
[KE07]: FAO. 2005. AFRICOVER, Kenya - Thematic Agriculture Aggregation, FAO, Rome, Italy, http://www.africover.org, 13/12/2004.
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