Overview of challenging context
Ethiopia is a ‘decentralizing environment’ challenging due to devastation caused by many years of dictatorship and civil war. Insurgency and conflict in or nearby retain potential to create significant disruption. Situation is more challenging yet due to widespread poverty, AIDS, extreme land degradation and high variability in rainfall.
IFAD program and project context with linkages to this one
IFAD’s strategy in Ethiopia focuses on supporting investment programs with the greatest potential impact on sustainable household food security and on the incomes of rural poor people, particularly small-scale farmers and herders, and women in all categories. Small-scale irrigation is one of four objectives of the program.
Specific project linkages:
- Participatory Small-Scale Irrigation Development Programme (began 2007), The programme’s goal is to improve food security, family nutrition and incomes for poor rural households by developing irrigation schemes for small-scale including households headed by women, unemployed young people and people without land. The emphasis includes reform of small-scale irrigation development approaches.
- Pastoral community Development Project, in phase two. The project is designed to empower communities and enable the decentralized regional administration to better manage local development through community-based development planning linked to a community investment fund. Sustainable livelihood improvement efforts are driven by communities and often involve development of irrigation to help transition from pastoral to sedentary lifestyles.
Increased understanding of traditional knowledge in AWM, and maintenance costs and appropriate strategies for cost recovery for various types and scales of irrigation considered important knowledge needs to support implementation and sustainability of programs.
Potential partners
- Addis Ababa, Arba Minch, Bahir Dar, Haramaya, Mekelle Universities
- Soil and Water Management Network (ASARECA-SWMNet)
- Improved Management of Agricultural Water in Eastern and Southern Africa (IMAWESA)
- Nile Basin Initiative (NBI)
- CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF)
- Catholic Relief Services (CRS)
- Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR)
- Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD)
