Development and management of irrigated lands in Tigray, Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is characterised by famine as a result of high population pressure, resource base degradation, and insufficient rainfall for rainfed agriculture. On the other hand, it is endowed with a huge annual water resource potential of about 110 billion m ³ , a potentially irrigable land of 3.6 million ha and productive manpower of about 48% of the total population. In view of these facts, the Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI) development strategy adopted in August 1992 has set irrigation as a major pillar to increase food production and to achieve food self-sufficiency. The earthen dam irrigation development program in the regional state of Tigray is part of this initiative.

The effective and sustainable utilization of the limited water resource is very crucial in arid and semi-arid areas like Tigray. The results of the study carried out at two earthen dam irrigation schemes indicated that the schemes are playing a very important role in improving the livelihood of the poor farmers. However, the research has also identified problems that may affect the sustainability and ultimately the food security effort of the regional Government. These are related to sedimentation in the reservoirs, reservoir operation schedule, water management, salinity, policy, institutional and socio-economics issues. The major lesson learnt from the study was that the success and sustainability of the irrigation schemes depend on the level of integrated approach in the development and management. The integrated approach need to take the whole irrigation scheme as one entity, including the catchment, the reservoir and dam, the command area, the beneficiaries and downstream impacts. Failure or weakness in one of the links may affect the entire system.