Publication: Assessment of Farmer-Led Irrigation Development in Rwanda
Loading...
Published
2021-06-21
ISSN
Date
2021-06-22
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Irrigation development in Rwanda is typically not demand-driven. Existing irrigation developments have mostly resulted from government-led initiatives and donor support with the aim of achieving food security. A few irrigation projects have also been initiated by private commercial farmers and smallholder farmers with use of small-scale irrigation technology (SSIT). Farmer-led irrigation development (FLID) is defined as a process by which small-scale farmers or commercial farmers drive the establishment, improvement, and/or expansion of irrigated agriculture, often in interaction with external actors. It typically involves entrepreneurial investments by farmers either alone or in groups. For the FLID supply chain to be effective and efficient, several key private and public sector participants are involved. Districts, sectors, and offices are key stakeholders that deliver agriculture extension and advisory services and serve as focal points representing the needs of local communities and coordinating multisector responses. Regarding FLID financing, the government has attempted to reform policies and increase access by smallholder farmers to financial services. As a result, different commercial banks both public and private, MFIs, and other financial service providers continue to expand their financial services to poor rural communities, especially smallholder farmers.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Nzeyimana, Innocent. 2021. Assessment of Farmer-Led Irrigation Development in Rwanda. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35798 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Assessment of Farmer-Led Irrigation Development in Ghana(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020)Adequate agricultural production for food and nutrition security as well as better incomes for farmers and rural inhabitants represent key development objectives of many nations, and they are most crucial in Africa. Water is critical in food production, and its use now and in the future is a major determinant of whether the stated objective is achieved. Because of climate change and associated variability, dependence on rainfed food production is risky and unsustainable. There is a need for substantial increase in irrigated production, particularly farmer-led irrigation development (FLID), in Africa and especially in Ghana. This report consists of an assessment of FLID in Ghana as well as of associated business and financing models that can be pursued for its further development.Publication Assessment of Farmer-Led Irrigation Development in Niger(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-21)Niger is a large landlocked country whose northern two-thirds lies within the Sahara Desert with a population of about 21.5 million people. Most of the population is concentrated in areas around the Niger River in the southwestern corner of the country and along its long southern border with Nigeria. Niger’s economic activity is concentrated on traditional activities, primarily agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fishery but also informal trade and production. The country has experienced declining average rainfall, desertification, recurring droughts, and deforestation. Undernourishment is widespread. Agricultural risks, primarily droughts in Niger, have severe economic consequences with wide repercussions. Farmer-led irrigation (FLI) in the Niger context could be defined as irrigation privately owned and managed by farmers. The purpose of this study is to analyze the extent and the environment of FLI development in Niger, the challenges and constraints, and the business opportunities to be piloted.Publication Emerging Public-Private Partnerships in Irrigation Development and Management(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-05)The objective of this paper is to identify the possible role and opportunities for the private sector to participate with governments and farmers in developing and managing irrigation and drainage (I&D) infrastructure. Over the last 50 years, irrigated agriculture has been vital to meeting fast-rising food demand and has been key to poverty reduction. In the coming years the strong demographic demand for food is expected to continue, and intensified irrigated agriculture will have to provide close to 60 percent of the extra food. However, in recent years, the pace of irrigation expansion has been slowing, there has been less improvement in productivity, and water availability for irrigation is increasingly constrained. Governments have long led the expansion of large-scale irrigation, but performance has been suboptimal, and reforms that have been introduced have proved slow to improve efficiency and water service. Faced with this challenge, the I&D sector has been wrestling with three deep-seated problems: low water use efficiency, a high reliance on government financing, and poor standards of management and maintenance. Much of the search for improved investment and institutional models in I&D has been driven by the need to resolve these three problems. One solution that has been tested over the last two decades has been Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) involving water user associations (WUAs) in the financing and management of schemes. This solution had its logical culmination in irrigation management transfer, the handover of responsibility for scheme operation and maintenance (O&M) to farmers and their organizations. This solution promised to relieve governments of both the fiscal burden and the responsibility for asset management and maintenance and to improve efficiency by empowering farmers. PIM has made impressive strides. However, efficiency has risen only marginally, and there are many schemes where O&M is beyond farmers' capacity.Publication Applying Results-Based Financing in Water Investments(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-05)Given the broad array of issues and the complexity faced by the water sector as a whole (from irrigation to flood protection, to water conservation and hydropower), there is great demand for future exploring the potential of RBF and tackling the questions still unanswered about many of its operational dimensions. This document takes a closer look at some of the practical aspects of implementing various RBF water schemes. Chapter 2 provides an analytical framework to explore if and when RBF can be a viable option, shedding light on some key factors and preconditions that are necessary for RBF to work--with the understanding that it can be used either as an alternative or a complement to a more traditional input-based funding scheme. Chapter 3 then revisits the concepts discussed in the analytical framework through the analysis of various case studies of RBF approaches in different water-related areas. Some of the case studies are based on actual projects already implemented or ongoing, while others are an illustrative elaboration, given the lack of practical cases to use as sources. Chapter 4 presents some conclusions and lessons learned. The key challenges that are likely to be encountered in designing an RBF scheme deal with: the clarity and level of certainty of the relationships from input to output to outcomes (causal links); the ease and availability of measurable indicators; and, consequently, the optimal determination of the necessary incentive(s) to align the goals of the principal with the agents' deliverables. Appendix A presents a glossary of RBF concepts and acronyms. Appendix B presents specific results and indicators which may be relevant for different sectors.Publication Morocco - Oum Er Rbia Irrigated Agricultural Modernization Project : Helping Farmers Increase Productivity(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-09)This operation provides a $70m loan for a project that would help participating farmers in the Oum Er Rbia basin increase the productivity of their farming and to promote more sustainable use of irrigation water to overcome current and future water deficits. This would be achieved by providing participating farmers with the level of irrigation service necessary for high efficiency drip irrigation. Scarcity and degradation of water resources have reached alarming levels in Morocco. In addition, water resources are unevenly distributed throughout the country and rainfall is highly variable. Droughts are common. Ninety percent of economically accessible surface resources are already controlled by dams, leaving few options for additional surface water storage. Population and economic growth have increased demand even as supply has fallen. The problems are particularly acute in the Oum Er Rbia basin. However, on average over the past decade, the basin's Large Scale Irrigation (LSI) schemes received only 60 percent of the water for which the system was designed. Government of Morocco has been pursuing reforms to improve water management and service delivery. The water allocation system is the responsibility of the River Basin Agencies, which were created to promote integrated and participatory water resource management. This note is based on the Project Appraisal Document (PAD). The project was declared effective only in September 2010 so it is too early for any implementation lessons to be collected.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Continental Drying: A Threat to Our Common Future(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-04)Grounded in new evidence from satellite data, “Continental Drying: A Threat to Our Common Future” presents the first global assessment of freshwater reserves over the past two decades. The findings expose an alarming trend of “continental drying,” a persistent long-term decline in freshwater availability across vast landmasses. Not only are droughts and deluges becoming more unpredictable, but the total amount of freshwater available for use has also significantly declined. Continental drying, driven by global warming, worsening droughts, and unsustainable water and land use, is a silent but accelerating crisis—largely unknown to the public—that reshapes the global water narrative. Continental drying raises profound risks. This report reveals new empirical evidence showing how freshwater depletion leads to major job losses, reduced incomes, wildfires, and biodiversity threats. In the long term, the combined effects of drying and warming could push societies toward a tipping point where damage accelerates rapidly and adaptation becomes increasingly difficult. Against the backdrop of continental drying, global water consumption rose by 25 percent between 2000 and 2019, with about a third of this increase occurring in regions already experiencing drying. Compounding the pressure, a substantial share of water use in drying regions remains inefficient. Continental Drying identifies hot spots where rising demand and declining supply converge and explores where and how water savings can be realized. This report recommends a three-pronged approach to address the crisis: managing demand, augmenting water supply, and improving water allocation. Five cross-cutting levers—strengthening institutions, reforming water tariffs and repurposing subsidies, adopting water accounting, leveraging data and technological innovations, and valuing water in trade—are essential for effective implementation and to attract private investment to finance the approach. Beyond water, addressing trade barriers, investing in education and skills development, and improving access to markets and financial services are critical for strengthening job and livelihood resilience amid a continental drying crisis.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication The Global Findex Database 2025: Connectivity and Financial Inclusion in the Digital Economy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-16)The Global Findex 2025 reveals how mobile technology is equipping more adults around the world to own and use financial accounts to save formally, access credit, make and receive digital payments, and pursue opportunities. Including the inaugural Global Findex Digital Connectivity Tracker, this fifth edition of Global Findex presents new insights on the interactions among mobile phone ownership, internet use, and financial inclusion. The Global Findex is the world’s most comprehensive database on digital and financial inclusion. It is also the only global source of comparable demand-side data, allowing cross-country analysis of how adults access and use mobile phones, the internet, and financial accounts to reach digital information and resources, save, borrow, make payments, and manage their financial health. Data for the Global Findex 2025 were collected from nationally representative surveys of about 145,000 adults in 141 economies. The latest edition follows the 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2021 editions and includes new series measuring mobile phone ownership and internet use, digital safety, and frequency of transactions using financial services. The Global Findex 2025 is an indispensable resource for policy makers in the fields of digital connectivity and financial inclusion, as well as for practitioners, researchers, and development professionals.Publication Making Refugee Self-Reliance Work: From Aid to Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-09)"Making Refugee Self-Reliance Work: From Aid to Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa" advocates for the enhancement of refugee self-reliance as a strategic, humane, development approach to refugee assistance. Facilitating refugees’ capacity to support themselves through gainful work not only upholds their dignity and autonomy but also offers socioeconomic benefits to host communities by unlocking opportunities for shared investment and development. The report demonstrates how refugee self-reliance in Sub-Saharan Africa remains elusive and identifies various reasons why this is the case: encampment limits the scope for self-reliance; restrictions on refugees’ right to work hinder self-sufficiency; small allocations of infertile land make even subsistence farming impossible; aid delivery in specific areas contributes to settlement patterns in which skills and economic opportunities do not match; economic development in remote, resource-scarce regions is unsustainable; and dependence on aid shifts funding priorities from long-term development to unproductive care and maintenance models. To overcome these challenges, the report outlines five areas for policy action: 1. Ending restrictive encampment policies 2. Boosting refugees’ economic participation 3. Supporting host communities 4. Reshaping financing and investment models 5. Investing in preparedness. Success requires committed leadership from host governments, as well as coordinated engagement and sustained support from humanitarian organizations and development partners.Publication Using ORBIS to Build a Global Database of Firms with State Participation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12)This paper develops a novel methodology to construct a harmonized cross-country database of the state’s footprint in markets: the Businesses of the State database. The methodology of the database is built on three criteria—(i) a harmonized definition of state-owned enterprises, (ii) identification of direct and indirect state ownership linkages at the national and subnational levels across the corporate sector, and (iii) classification of economic activities depending on their efficiency rationale—which conceptualize a framework to trace state presence in the corporate sector across economic activities. The database is constructed leveraging different firm-level data sources including the ORBIS Global Database, as the primary data source, which is then complemented with supplementary data sources (EMIS Intelligence, Factiva, Worldscope, Pitchbook, among others) to mitigate ORBIS’s data limitations across countries and regions. The Businesses of the State database identifies an unprecedented number of firms with state participation across countries and economic activities, as well as providing novel insights on financial performance, economic performance, and governance of state-owned enterprises. A deep-dive analysis of 36 countries within the Businesses of the State database shows that 69 percent of state-owned enterprises operate in competitive activities (low efficiency-rationale for state participation), 16% are in partially contestable industries (moderate efficiency rationale), and 15 percent are natural monopolies (strong efficiency rationale). Furthermore, this analysis suggests that performance-based productivity of state-owned enterprises (revenue per worker) is negatively correlated with government control variables, such as government shareholding percentage and direct versus indirect government ownership.