Global Map of Irrigation Areas

Eritrea

The total area equipped for irrigation is 21 590 ha [ER01]. The figures relate to year 1993. No sub-national statistics for irrigated land were available.

Of the total area equipped for irrigation, 540 ha was assigned to the location of the Northern Horticulture Development Project as derived from the FAO irrigation project database for Africa [ER02]. Additionally irrigated area was assigned to all areas classified as irrigated by AFRICOVER [ER03]. These areas were classified into three categories:
a) areas in which only irrigated crops are growing,
b) areas having a mixture of rainfed and irrigated crops with irrigated crops as main crop,
c) areas having a mixture of rainfed and irrigated crops with rainfed crops as main crop.
It was assumed that the irrigation density in category b) is 67% of the density in category a) and that irrigation density in category c) is 33% of the density in category a).

References

[ER01]: FAO. 2005. AQUASTAT country profile Eritrea. FAO, Rome, http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/aglw/AQUASTAT/countries/index.stm, 08/11/2005.
[ER02]: FAO. 2006. FAO irrigation project data base for Africa. GIS-Database compiled from different sources, available at FAO, Rome, Italy (unpublished).
[ER03]: FAO. 2005. AFRICOVER, Eritrea - Spatially Aggregated Multipurpose Landcover database. FAO, Rome, Italy, http://www.africover.org, 13/12/2004.