Manual Drilling Investment Opportunity in Ethiopia
Interventions that benefit the rural poor in Ethiopia could potentially improve the lives of almost 36 million rural poor people. Pilot efforts by International Development Enterprises (IDE) to test manual drilling were successful in the areas selected:…
Supporting smallholder private pump irrigation in sub-Saharn Africa
Smallholder private irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) provides millions of poor farmers with addtional income when they need it. most Those with access to irrigation have substantially higher incomes and better food security than those who solely depend on rainfed production. In particular,…
To overcome an acute water shortage in the dry season, Brijendra Singh and his son Pratep took a loan from the local bank to build a rainwater harvesting tank on their farm. With water stored in the structure during the following monsoon season, Brijendra and his family have been able to cultivate their…
Small dams, reservoirs and water storage structures have long attracted the attention of those in charge of rural development and can be found all around the world. Defining what ‘makes’ a small reservoir is not simple, as the criteria used to define them (size, stored volume, embankment height, type of infrastructure, modes of management, planning approaches, number of users served, irrigated area, etc.) vary widely from one place to another. This paper considers all ‘off farm’ water storage, mostly above but occasionally underground, of a volume inferior to 1 million m3, the uses of which include but are not necessarily limited to agricultural production (for crops, livestock, fish), and with a special focus on small dams or reservoirs (SRs).
Millions of smallholder famers in sub-Saharan Africa are earning additional income by growing vegetable crops during the dry season. Over 80 percent of these farmers are watering crops using manual labor. There are regions where many of the farmers are already using small motorized pumps, and it is clear that these farmers have substantially higher incomes and better food security than those who depend solely on rainfed production. In other areas there is great potential, but there is a paucity of credit facilities for farmers, information about pumps is patchy and there is a huge discrepancy in prices. The purpose of this business case is to make it possible for more farmers to reap the benefits of pump-driven irrigation.
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