The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization Regional Office for Africa (FAO-RAF) and African Union’s Semi-Arid Food Grain Research and Development office (AU-SAFGRAD), and more than 50 delegates representing 34 African nations, convened at M Hotel in Kigali from June 24 to 28, a jointly organised workshop on agricultural water management and irrigation.

The meeting aimed to foster knowledge exchange and capacity-building critical for advancing smart agricultural practices across the continent.

The five-day workshop drew high-level technical experts from Benin, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Cameroun, Cote d’Ivoire, Centre Africa Republic, Republic of Congo, DR Congo, and Djibouti.

Others include Egypt, Kingdom of Eswatini, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mali, Malawi, and Mauritania.

Also in attendance are experts from Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tchad, Togo, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. And the involvement of development partners such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Arab Fund for Technical Assistance to African Countries (AFTAAC), the African Export-Import (Afrexim) Bank, and the World Bank (WB) helped enrich discussions.

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Key outcomes, actions

After intensive deliberations, participants identified and summarised key actions important for transforming irrigated agriculture systems:

1. Enabling environment: Support member countries to develop, strengthen, and/or update irrigation development policies/strategies. They should be comprehensive to address all key aspects, including climate change-related issues, and financing aspects. Partners should help in developing a template, with structure and minimum requirements for these policies/strategies

2. Irrigation programmes: Beyond development strategies, governments need support to develop a national agriculture water management/irrigation programme. This will shift mentalities from piecemeal projects to a national programme, which will guide investments.

3. Project preparation facility: Strengthen project preparation facilities in countries to strengthen the bankability of projects and reduce delays in irrigation projects.

4. Data, monitoring, and evaluation: Build/strengthen national capacities on data, and M&E. Need to integrate irrigation MIS into the sector and even the national MIS. Need to explore the use of innovations like GIS, remote sensing, earth observations to data, and M&E.

5. Institutionalise knowledge exchange forums: Need to regularise and institutionalise knowledge exchange forums to create a platform for technical experts to learn from each other. It is proposed that AUC leads the organisation with support from partners.

6. Private sector participation: Countries need support on how to involve the private sector to invest in agricultural water management/irrigation. Partners need to document business models that really work. They will also need to invest in de-risking facilities, to attract the private sector.

7. Documentation of best practices and region-appropriate business models: Considering diverse irrigation systems, there is a need to document cases of best practices and business models used for smallholder irrigation systems (successful, not successful) in the region for learning. Delegates agreed that the region needs a compendium of business models that really work for smallholder irrigated systems.

8. Incentivise investments in green energy and water-efficient technologies: In many smallholder irrigation systems, like those using sprinkler systems, energy expenses make up to one-quarter of their total expenditure – and this will continue to grow. Some countries are fully shifting from using fossil fuels for pumping to using the grid, but electricity is also under a lot of pressure. In addition, being the highest consumer of water, irrigation needs to shift to more water-efficient application technologies.

Participants agreed to strongly advocate for incentivising investments in green energy and water-efficient technologies, which may include tax breaks, to encourage investments in renewable energy and water-efficient technologies. This needs high-level advocacy, as it will complement commitments by Governments to the Global Greening Agenda and in the COP meetings. Moreover, delegates expressed a clear view that the water-energy-food-environment nexus should serve as a guiding principle in thinking through the next generation of investments in irrigation development.

9. Comprehensive financing: Irrigation requires high capital expenditure and is prone to climate and market shocks. While some funding packages exist, they are not comprehensive. There is a need to develop innovative financing instruments and de-risking/risk-transfer schemes targeting smallholder irrigators.

10. Lobby the learning event to be an annual event: Organisers should lobby to make this an annual event rotating amongst the delegate countries to enhance peer learning and gain experiences from other countries

11. Strengthen M&E and extension services: The agricultural space is evolving daily, and smallholder irrigated farming systems must keep pace with these changes. Dynamic, innovative, targeted, and well-informed extension services are critical for the sustained productivity of the smallholder irrigated agricultural systems in the region.

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Mure Agbonlahor, the Senior Officer of Production and Marketing at AU-SAFGRAD, said that the discussion focused on three main thematic areas; training on designing irrigation projects at the country level, training on the monitoring and evaluation of irrigation projects, and investment, financing, and developing bankable irrigation projects.

He noted: "After every presentation, there were discussion sessions where the directors met and discussed how they could relate to what had been taught to their country situations. They considered whether it was possible to apply these concepts in their countries and, if not, what the challenges might be. This is what we have done over the last five days.

"The idea behind this is that we hope it will translate into actions in the member states. The directors are now returning to their countries, and we expect they will be able to put into practice what they have learned.

"I noticed that almost all African countries have similar challenges and problems. The challenges of infrastructure gaps, funding, capacity, and others are quite similar. It’s good to have this workshop where people can come together and learn from one another.”

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Valere Nzeyimana, the Senior Water Development and Management Officer at the FAO Regional Office for Africa, noted that FAO supports its member countries in fighting hunger. "At the FAO-RAF, we collaborate closely with the AU and regional economic communities, and through these partnerships, we also support member countries. That is how the collaboration works,” he explained.

"We are now implementing the AU Continental Irrigation Development and agriculture water management framework. We have begun by supporting the domestication of this framework in several countries.

"In particular, in collaboration with the AU, we have assisted regional economic communities, such as the East African Community (EAC), IGAD, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), in developing their own irrigation strategies. Consequently, we have decided that it would be beneficial to build the capacity of irrigation directors in other countries across Africa and that’s why we are here,” he said.