Baseline Report on the Rehabilitation of Irrigation Schemes and Enhancement of Water Management in Ghana
Ghana, 2024-Present
Partner Organizations
Overview
In Ghana, a sub-Saharan African (SSA) country, agriculture makes up a significant portion of GDP, mostly through crop farming. More than 80% of farmers are smallholders, and their practices are characterized by low labour input, a high reliance on rainfall, and little to no modern technology. Ghanaian agriculture struggles with a low adoption of irrigation, with only about 2% of arable land under any form of irrigation. This overdependence on quantity and pattern of rainfall leaves the economy exposed to the growing unpredictability of weather caused by climate change. Ghana faces other challenges too: the country is only using about 1.7% of an estimated 1.9 million hectares of irrigable land area, and Ghana is very reliant on food imports, spending up to USD$500 million per year to import rice. Our project aims to increase the usage of irrigation and reduce the reliance on imported rice through rehabilitating irrigation schemes, and to enhance the human resource capacity of the various Ghanaian agencies involved, improving the social aspects of agriculture in Ghana.
Activities and Methods
The Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), had requested the government of the Republic of Korea to develop human resources to effectively rework and manage irrigation schemes and build capacity for irrigation and water management. The Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and MoFA signed an agreement to rehabilitate three irrigation schemes, the Aveyime, Ashiaman and Dawhenya Irrigation Schemes. The project spans 2023 to 2026 with an estimated cost of US$6,530,000. Specifically, the project will increase rice productivity in selected irrigation schemes and reduce dependence on grain imports by establishing an agricultural production base and nurturing agricultural manpower. The project was split into two phases:
Phase 1:
Rehabilitation of irrigation facilities in Aveyime and Ashiaman irrigation schemes including the installation of solar irrigation facilities with the objective to increase the amount of irrigation water supply for farming and to increase irrigated farmland
Phase 2:
Capacity building of Water Users Association (WUA) scheme management officials to enable them to effectively manage the irrigation schemes to increase agricultural yield and productivity of farmers in the three public irrigation schemes.
JHSUSTAIN's Roles and Responsibilities
Our role in this project was to create and distribute a survey to obtain baseline data across various metrics against which the success of the project could be measured. This was an essential step in order to track the progress of the project, and informed GIDA strategies both during and after the project.
Results
While the project is still ongoing, the baseline survey has already produced important results which will significantly aid in the overall purpose of helping inform decisions on the main goals of increasing yield, improving infrastructure and equipment, installing solar energy panels, enhancing the capacity of the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA) and Water Users Association (WUA) members in the irrigation management system, and improving market access. The survey included information on gender and age of farmers, cost of electricity for pumping, as well as the incomes of the farmers. The survey indicated a need for additional training in agronomic practices, rice value chains, and water-related management systems. Furthermore, the data gathered from the survey highlighted a potential issue with the age of the farmers, leading to a call to target new younger WUA members and build their capacity in the use and maintenance of modern irrigation machines, to ensure the long-term sustainability of the irrigation scheme. KOICA and JHSUSTAIN also held invitational workshops for GIDA in Korea so they could see the technology that is being implemented in Ghana now to improve agriculture and irrigation. In the image below, officials travelled to the Seosan Reclamation Project completed by Hyundai in 1994.
