Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

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Governing water—A South-South Exchange with insights from Ethiopia and Ghana

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by Emmanuel Obuobie and Wei Zhang

Reliance on groundwater for food production is expected to increase with climate change in many countries. In Africa, rising use of groundwater poses risks to water and food security, particularly without strong institutions to regulate and monitor use. Communities need to become more knowledgeable and active in managing their common groundwater resources. Toward that aim, partners from Ghana, Ethiopia, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) participated in an exchange of knowledge and experience regarding groundwater governance and irrigation in August 2022 in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Within the context of the Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation project (Games to stimulate groundwater governance: An introduction and example from Ethiopia) the IFPRI-led team has been implementing game-based experiential learning interventions that aim to make the invisible groundwater resource visible by growing understanding of how groundwater behaves as a system under a variety of extraction and conservation methods. The goal of the interventions is to promote proactive management and governance of groundwater resources within communities.  

A farmer (second from right) answers questions about irrigated farming. The visiting team gathered around his mechanized boreholes (blue capped pipe encircled with tire).

To encourage further learning among groundwater-dependent irrigators in Ghana and Ethiopia, key Ghanaian and Ethiopian partners lead local implementation of the games, visiting three groundwater irrigation sites in the Gware, Babile and Kajelo communities in the Upper East Region. In each community, an irrigator shared information and experience on crops cultivated, types of groundwater abstraction structures and pumps used, depths from which water was abstracted, capital and operational costs of groundwater abstraction, as well as market-related opportunities and challenges.

Participants recognized that groundwater irrigation in Ghana and Ethiopia share many characteristics, including the semi-arid nature of the landscape, irrigation practices, plot sizes, increasing groundwater abstraction, and increased volatility in groundwater recharge due to climate change.

Differences in practices were also evident. Ghanaian irrigators access groundwater from both shallow and deep aquifers for irrigation. Abstraction from shallow, hand-dug wells is done using buckets tied to ropes or with motorized pumps, while abstraction from deep mechanized boreholes is done with electricity powered submersible pumps. In contrast, Ethiopian irrigators abstract groundwater from shallow aquifers only, using low-capacity surface water pumps powered with diesel. Wells for abstraction from shallow aquifers are similar in both countries, but the tops of Ethiopian wells are bigger in diameter for motorized pumps and to increase the depth at which water can be lifted. Ghanaian irrigators are increasingly shifting from the use of hand-dug wells to mechanized boreholes to abstract water from deeper and more reliable aquifers.

A farmer (left) interacts with the visiting team nearby a groundwater irrigation well on his farm plot at Babile in the Upper East Region of Ghana.

During their visit to Ghana, the Ethiopian team observed the first of a series of three stakeholder workshops aimed at reflecting on theory of change for groundwater governance and management in the White Volta Basin. These workshops brought together representatives of different sectors of society to discuss the future of groundwater management, the role of the different actors, and the conditions and opportunities which would support moving towards a common vision.

Ghanaian partners plan to visit Ethiopia in January 2023 to learn from Ethiopian groundwater irrigators and partners, thereby complementing and deepening the exchange. The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), an Indian NGO that has been a key partner of the consortium will also contribute by sharing from their vast groundwater governance experience in India.

We would like to acknowledge and extend our thanks for our collaborators in Ghana, Emmanuel Obuobie & Margaret Akuriba, and Ethiopia, Fekadu Galew and Natnael Teka, for leading community engagement and their role in research and knowledge sharing.

The visiting team interacts with a farmer who irrigates with groundwater at Kajelo, next to a concrete water storage tank under construction to store groundwater for irrigation.

2022 World Water Week

Join ILSSI during our virtual sessions at Stockholm World Water Week!

Register for World Water Week on their website here: https://www.worldwaterweek.org/tickets

Click below for details on each session.

“On the money”: Innovating finance to enable farmer-led irrigation Tuesday 23 August 17:00-18:20

Irrigation can strengthen resilience, improve nutrition and increase incomes, but low access to technologies has limited growth. Credit access alone will not unlock access to irrigation technologies. Instead, scaling farmer-led irrigation requires changes in a complex finance ecosystem that includes farmers, finance providers, value chain actors and equipment suppliers.

Solar irrigation in Africa: Bright future or broken promise? Thursday 25 August 17:00-18:20

Solar irrigation has been touted as a key climate smart strategy for Africa, and research confirms a large expansion potential. However, actual sales of solar irrigation pumps have remained extremely low. This session shares new insights on what government and private actors need to consider to successfully grow solar irrigation.

Governing Groundwater: The Why and the How
Thursday 25 August 15:30-16:50

The potential and needs of accelerating groundwater development in Sub-Saharan Africa are large; equally large are the challenges to govern the resource sustainably. This session provides new insights on the economic benefits of growing groundwater development and discusses entry points for better managing groundwater resources.


Solar panels on farm, here in India.
Photo: Metro Media/IWMI.

Gender and Inclusion

The benefits of improving women’s access to participate in small scale irrigation are clear.

Equity and inclusion in small scale irrigation improves resilience of households, enables climate adaptation, and bolsters nutrition and health. Supporting women’s access to small scale irrigation through gender-sensitive approaches in irrigation value chains can ensure the potential is fully realized.

Women and men have different priorities, challenges, and preferences when it comes to irrigation. Understanding and addressing women and men’s specific needs can help significantly increase the overall number of people adopting and benefitting from small scale irrigation. The introduction of SSI can bring opportunities for both empowerment and exclusion.

Challenges

Women face specific barriers that keep them from investing in small scale irrigation. Market actors and public development initiatives must reach women through their preferred information sources, provide technologies suitable for multiple purposes, offer suitable financial tools and credit products, and facilitate market linkages that can help women turn a profit from their irrigation investments. Projects must also design interventions to help address the challenges women meet within the household and community.

ILSSI’s gender responsive approach looks at multiple, interconnected issues in irrigation equipment supply chains through to irrigated value chains. Important value chains, such as nutritious crops, livestock and fodder, and cocoa, are being explored. Together, researchers, private sector actors and farmers are together identifying approaches to overcome constraints and make SSI technologies available to women.

Productive agriculture through access to irrigation technology, Ethiopia
Photo: WLE/IWMI

Top lessons

Enhancing equity and inclusion in small scale irrigation can improve the resilience of households to adverse climatic, economic, or health challenges

A greater focus on equity and inclusion in small scale irrigation can free up women’s time, for example by allowing them to grow crops near their homestead and reducing their travel time. Irrigation systems also serve as a nearby water source, eliminating the need to walk far to collect water. With more time, women can, for example, grow crops for sale, increasing the family’s economic resilience. Improving women’s access to high-quality agricultural insurance through irrigation providers can also offset their climate risks.

Small scale irrigation interventions designed to enhance women’s empowerment are more likely to contribute to improved nutrition

Women’s empowerment is one of the four main pathways that link small scale irrigation to improved nutrition: when women are able to make decisions about irrigation technology, or irrigated produce, or when women no longer have to spend time collecting water, then irrigation can be a route to women’s empowerment. Research has indicated that women’s empowerment translates into greater spending on nutritious diets.

Gaps in women’s access to credit can be overcome by designing finance products and information tools to be gender sensitive

Business models as well as finance tools and products are often inadvertently gender biased, and private companies might not prioritize women farmers as a potential market segment. But considering the specific needs and circumstances of women, youth, and resource-poor groups can enable private and public actors to expand their markets, while allowing more people to invest in and reap the benefits from small scale irrigation.

Women use irrigation water resources for multiple purposes and therefore including women in local management of water can help ensure that all users and uses are accounted for

Efforts to improve water resource governance are more successful when both women and men actively participate. By enhancing shared understanding of water resources, decisions made about them, and the potential consequences of these decisions, communities are better able to manage them for the benefit of all. While potentially leading to more sustainably and inclusively managed irrigation across the community, this can also result in improved equity in the distribution of irrigation-related benefits.

If private sector actors and entrepreneurs are supported to reduce their risks, they can contribute to building resilient market systems and enable equitable access to small scale irrigation

ILSSI provides competitive awards to small and medium enterprises working in solar irrigation, which enables them to offset the costs and risks associated with exploring new markets, revising financial tools and products, and testing new distribution approaches to reach more women and youth.

DOWNLOAD: ILSSI brief on Gender

                 Contributing to solutions

Making financial products for small scale irrigation more equitable can boost climate resilience for everyone

ILSSI works with partners to strengthen insurance products based on irrigated production indices. By using integrated models that combine field and crop production cycles, water systems, and economic analysis, crop production indexes underpin insurance products with more reliable pay-outs to farmers during climate extreme events. In addition, integrating irrigation into insurance and finance packages opens innovative paths to credit and risk reduction, for farmers and for equipment suppliers.

Designing finance products and information tools to be gender sensitive can help overcome gaps in women’s access to credit

ILSSI is working with irrigation equipment companies, financial service actors, and irrigated produce off-takers to develop more inclusive approaches to finance, such as asset-based finance, pay-as-you-go, seasonal repayment plans, and more inclusive asset-based finance. Through ILSSI, researchers are collaborating with private-sector solar irrigation equipment suppliers to integrate a wider, more inclusive, gender-sensitive set of credit assessment criteria, benefitting both women farmers and equipment suppliers.

Small scale irrigation can support women’s empowerment and in turn improve households’ nutritional security

Irrigation can be an entry point for women’s empowerment, and women’s empowerment can lead to improved nutritional outcomes for entire households. ILSSI research in Ethiopia indicates that empowerment may in turn lead to more of a household’s resources being allocated to nutritious foods and healthcare. Also in Ethiopia, women who began producing irrigated fodder to support livestock have seen significant improvements in dairy production, leading to enhanced nutrition and family incomes as well as improved climate resilience.

Ensuring that women’s voices are heard helps improve water governance for all

In Ethiopia, as the use of groundwater for irrigation expands, ILSSI researchers have been working with communities, using experiential learning processes, to improve water resource governance. A key priority is ensuring that women’s voices are heard when decisions are made about the use of and access to collectively managed water resources.

Select resources

Achieving Climate Adaptation and Resilience For All

Role of Small Scale Irrigation

To mobilize the benefits of small scale irrigation in achieving GFSS, Climate Strategy and Sustainable Development Goals, future investments must build on evidence to achieve goals and address the potential risks. This event aims to identify priorities for future research for development activities in small scale irrigation and agricultural water management aligned with the USAID climate strategy.

The event will facilitate a discussion on the lessons learned on small scale irrigation, water-based adaptation and mitigation, as well as trade-offs, to strengthen future investments and close knowledge gaps, around the questions:

  • How does small scale irrigation support climate adaptation and positive resilience outcomes for poor, marginalized farmers, including women farmers?
  • How can water-energy-food nexus approaches to small scale irrigation support climate change mitigation?
  • How can investments and programs be designed to manage environmental risks and trade-offs?
  • What market system and finance innovations could enable partners to scale climate-smart irrigation to meet demand?
  • What tools and capacity are needed for effective planning, decision-making and governance of productive water resource use? 
SpeakerPresentations
Jerry Glover, Deputy Director, Center for Agriculture, USAIDOpening Remarks
Nathanial Matthews, CEO, Global Resilience PartnershipKeynote: Planning for water and future food systems under uncertainty
Dawit Mekonnen, Research Fellow, (IFPRI)Creating resilience to extreme climate events: How irrigation has reduced ENSO impacts in Ethiopia
Fred Kizito, Chief Scientist and Project Manager, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)Best of both worlds: Irrigation for food and feed
Gabriella Izzi, Senior Irrigation & Drainage Specialist, World BankFarmer-led irrigation initiative
Claudia Ringer, Deputy Division Director & Hua Xie, Research Fellow, IFPRIPotential for solar-powered irrigation: Constraints & opportunities under climate change?
Lucie Pluschke, East Africa Hub Manager, WE4FSolar-Powered Irrigation Systems – Game changer and nexus approach for Water, Energy and Food Security
Karin Jeanneret, CEO and Co-owner, ENNOSState of the art technology for irrigation systems
Raghavan Srinivasan, Resident Director, Blackland Research and Extension Center and Spatial Sciences Laboratory, Texas A&M UniversityMobilizing knowledge partners, technologies and tools to monitor and plan for water resource management under climate change
Hagar ElDidi, Research Analyst, IFPRIExperiential learning: Groundwater games and collective action in Ethiopia
Minh Thai, Senior Researcher – Innovation Scaling, International Water Management Institute (IWMI)Scaling private sector inclusive business: Lessons learned and knowledge gaps
Zachary Stewart, Production Systems Specialist, Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, USAIDClosing comments and Thanks

Further details can be found on our Meeting Agenda.

Additional resources:

Student interview: Breaking boundaries in scientific modeling for better, more sustainable water management

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Fati Aziz currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Texas A&M University in College Station, USA. She completed a PhD in Climate Change and Water Resources in November 2017 at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin, based on modeling work completed under the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI). The PhD was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land use (WASCAL).

What was the focus of your work with ILSSI and what were your most important findings?

In June 2015, during my PhD, I joined the Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) team at the Texas A&M University as a visiting scientist for five months. I received training in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) tool, which can be used to simulate the quality and quantity of surface and groundwater and to predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change.

Then, in February 2016, I participated in an IDSS training organized by ILSSI in Accra, Ghana, and that’s when I finished the calibration and validation of the SWAT model for river discharge and sediment loads in the Black Volta River Basin.

Fati Aziz, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Texas A&M University.

The Black Volta River Basin is the biggest sub-basin of the Volta River Basin, and it is shared by Burkina Faso, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali. Although its waters support significant economic activities, such as agriculture and energy production, the availability and use of water is threatened by population growth, changes in land use and land cover, and climate change.

Because I wanted to study the impact of climate change, land use and land cover change on the flow and sediment yield of the Black Volta, calibrating and validating the model was a critical step in my research. Proper model calibration and validation reduces errors in simulations and increases users’ confidence in the tool’s ability to make future projections.

When reviewing how well the SWAT model performed in terms of simulating the historical flow and sediment yield of the Black Volta, based on quantitative statistics during monthly calibration and validation, I found that the model simulated the two variables well during most of the calibration and validation periods.

Finally, when using the calibrated and validated model for projections, I found that all the model scenarios I used projected an increase in flow and sediment yield in the basin during the late (2051–2075) and end of the 21st century (2076–2100) periods, relative to the historical period (1981–2010). This was true for both seasonal and annual projections.

For example, the end-of-the-century projections under the RCP 8.5 scenario (the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario, which represents one of several greenhouse gas concentration trajectories) showed an increase in flow ranging between +69% and +243% across models. The sediment load increase ranged between +358% and +412%. An increase in streamflow may result in floods in the basin region, while higher sediment load may increase the turbidity of the river and cause loss of reservoir storage. Since most of the population in the basin depend on agriculture for their livelihood, measures to cope with increasing floods and droughts, such as enlarging existing reservoirs to take up extra water for storage and for irrigation purposes, should be explored and developed well ahead of time.

Fati Aziz measures flows in the Black Volta River Basin with an OTT Qliner 2
Fati Aziz measures flows in the Black Volta River Basin with an OTT Qliner 2.

Why did you choose the discipline you work in? What pulled you toward this as a scientist?

Given the rapid increase in global population, urbanization, and climate change, among other challenges, optimum management of natural resources presents one of the most critical challenges of our time. Wanting to contribute to better and sustainable water resource management policies, which are based on sound scientific evidence, made me focus on this field.

What are your experiences as a woman scientist in modeling, which tends to be dominated by men, and would you encourage other women to work in this discipline?

My experience in this field is mostly positive. The male-dominated nature of the field is a great source of inspiration to me as it pushes me to work harder. Fortunately, my male colleagues are very receptive and respect my perspectives. Currently, as the only woman in my IDSS research group at Texas A&M University, I receive enormous support and encouragement from my male colleagues.

My dear woman, if scientific modeling is something you’re interested in, I strongly encourage you to go for it. Trust me, there’s real joy in “breaking boundaries” doing what you love.

What is your current focus of study and what changes do you hope will come from it?

I am currently assessing land suitability for cocoa cultivation in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire using a multi-criteria evaluation technique based on geographical information systems (GIS). My study is part of a bigger research effort that aims to assess the use of supplemental irrigation to improve the production of cocoa and other cash crops in West African countries. My findings may assist stakeholders in developing better crop management strategies that improve yield and environmental sustainability. We hope that using supplementary irrigation for vegetables and cocoa seedlings will lead to increased food production, household income, and nutrition in the West African region.

Texas A&M University System Member