AQUASTAT - FAO's Global Information System on Water and Agriculture

    Ghana

    By year 2000, area equipped for irrigation in formal irrigation schemes consisted of 8 587 ha in public schemes and 10 413 ha in private schemes [GH01]. The extent of informal peri-urban irrigation is not exactly known. In the area around Kumasi about 11 900 ha of peri-urban irrigation were reported [GH01] and the total extent of peri-urban irrigation in Ghana was estimated at 40 000 ha [GH02]. Total area equipped for irrigation is therefore 59 000 ha. The irrigated area estimated that way is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Ghana irrigation areas in PDF or Ghana irrigation areas in Excel.

    No sub-national statistics on the extent of irrigated lands have been available, but the location and corresponding area equipped for irrigation of the existing 22 public irrigation schemes was available (GH03]. The peri-urban irrigation was reported to appear in a 40 km radius around the city centre of Kumasi [GH04]. Additionally some peri-urban irrigation was assigned to the surrounding of Accra, Takoradi and Tamale [GH02]. The location of the private schemes was unknown. Their corresponding irrigation area was assigned to areas which were classified as irrigable on a map available in the AQUASTAT library [GH05].

    While the area in formal irrigation schemes is irrigated with surface water [GH01], farmers in informal irrigation use different water sources like shallow wells, streams, waste water or pipe-born water [GH02]. Based on the information in [GH02] it was estimated that 3 percent of the informal irrigation area is irrigated with waste water, 30 percent with groundwater and 67 percent with surface water resulting in 12 000 ha of area equipped for irrigation with groundwater, 45 800 ha of area equipped for irrigation with surface water and 1 200 ha of area equipped for irrigation with water from non-conventional sources. It was assumed that 3 000 ha of the area equipped for irrigation was not actually irrigated [GH01] resulting in an total area actually irrigated of 56 000 ha.

    References

    [GH01]: FAO. 2005. AQUASTAT country profile Ghana, FAO, Rome, Italy.
    [GH02]: Drechsel, P., Graefe, S., Sonou, M., Cofie, O. 2006. Informal irrigation in urban West Africa: an overview. Research Report 102, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Colombo, Sri Lanka, http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/Publications/IWMI\_Research\_Reports/ index.aspx , 19/08/2009.
    [GH03]: Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA). 2001. General information on public irrigation projects in Ghana.
    [GH04]: HR Wallingford. 2002. Informal irrigation in peri-urban areas. Institutional aspects and options for improvement. KAR Project R7132.
    [GH05]: Unknown. 1985. Existing and proposed irrigation projects in Ghana. Map available in the AQUASTAT library.