From 2001-10-22 to 2001-10-26

Venue: Accra, Ghana

Summary:
In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the sustainable expansion of irrigated lands remains a challenge to food security and poverty alleviation goals. Until recently, irrigated agriculture was strongly, and almost exclusively supported by the State. With the rapid decline of public assistance to agricultural development, and more especially to the irrigation sub-sector, funding for the development, operation and maintenance of large-scale irrigation schemes has decreased significantly. Those government-managed schemes have generally performed far below expectations. Most of the time, their financial returns could not cover O&M as well as the initial capital costs.

Meanwhile, privately developed and managed irrigation schemes in most of the SSA countries shows that there is a business potential for private entrepreneur involvement in irrigation. This involvement varies from the small-scale informal urban and peri-urban agriculture, local initiatives developed by individuals or groups (women) in rural areas to larger and well-equipped irrigated farms. Groups of farmers or WUAs that are successfully running parts of irrigation schemes for which responsibility was transferred to them by the Government can also be considered as operating private irrigation schemes.

Recent developments have shown the increasingly important role of new operators such as private irrigation services providers. In any case, the availability of credit schemes is an important factor that can contribute significantly to the development of irrigation by private undertakers, be it at production level or up-and-downstream of production.

The seminar intends to draw from their experiences (positive and/or negative) with the development and management of private irrigated farms to formulate recommendations to improve and accelerate the development of private irrigation in SSA.

Organizers: Arid-L
FAO Regional Office for Africa
Contact Name: Mr. Moïse Sonou
E-mail: Moïse.Sonou@fao.org
URL: http://www.hipponet.nl/arid-l/ressources/seminar_oct2001en.htm