This post was written by Saa Dittoh, West African Centre for Water, Irrigation and Sustainable Agriculture (WACWISA) of the University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana.

Irrigated agriculture is the oldest means of food production in the world and in Africa. It is, therefore, surprising that except for a few countries, it is contributing very little to Africa’s food and nutrition security. There is a large body of literature bemoaning the failure of “modern” irrigation development in Africa, in which billions of dollars have been sunk. Most of that literature also points to the huge potential of “nonmodern,” farmer-led, low-cost irrigation methods, which have shown resilience despite policy rejections (either ignorantly or deliberately) and environmental challenges, such as climate change. The African Union acknowledges that “returns on investment in small-scale irrigation across Africa are much higher than those in large-scale development.” The inability or deliberate refusal by African countries to leverage the potential of these farmer-led irrigation systems is very difficult to understand.

The Ghana Case

The first known Ghana government attempt to invest in small-scale irrigation was the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)-sponsored Upper East Region Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP) in the 1990s, and there is hardly any remembrance of that project. The “rehabilitated” small/medium dams are all now in a state of disrepair. There has been, lately, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-led agriculture water management (AgW) solutions project — basically a research project — which identified very promising farmer-led and other irrigation systems that could be developed (i.e., improved upon with existing science and technology). There has also been the USAID Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) project, which piloted some of the promising methods in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. The results have been quite promising, but “what next?” This “what next” question is critical to most of the development initiatives in Africa. There is usually “nothing next” after the piloting of promising development initiatives.

Both the AgW solutions and ILSSI projects did involve staff of the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and some Ghanaian knowledge and research institutions, but not at a scale that could engender mainstreaming of outcomes. So, as with several other development projects, efforts and achievements are disappearing.

This continuing irrigation development dilemma has been because of several faulty actions and perceptions:

1. There are no serious assessments of why there have been failures of “modern” irrigation systems. This applies to other agriculture development projects in Ghana and other African countries. 
2. There continues to be funding of “modern” irrigation systems without addressing failures of past ones, and greater damage is being caused, especially with regards to environmental footprints. The focus on expensive “modern” irrigation systems prevents attention being paid to small-scale irrigation development.
3. “Modernization means big” mindsets of policymakers, politicians, consultants, contractors and even researchers need to change. Those mindsets are persisting partly because of ignorance but also because greater priority is placed on “individual benefits” over “common benefits” (benefits for all).
4. Small-scale irrigators’ views are not sought for and incorporated into policy formulation and implementation. The irrigators are treated as the “know-nothing” who must listen to the “know-all.” This, again, applies to other development projects in several parts of the continent.
5. Development partners’ (DP) interventions are often not mainstreamed into existing governmental and nongovernmental agencies and institutions and, thus, “achievements” disappear with the interventions.
6. DPs also do not involve and synthesize policymakers and politicians enough on their interventions and that has been partly because of the short-term nature of their interventions. Less than six-year project interventions will achieve almost nothing.
7. Policymakers, DPs and agricultural researchers are too focused on “commodity” and “single technology” thinking as opposed to the “systems thinking” and “systems farming” by smallholder farmers and irrigators. Irrigated agriculture can only be part of the farming systems of the people and must be treated as such for success.