Assessment of irrigation systems’ performance and sustainability in Burundi
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Date
2022
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
Irrigated agriculture has a crucial role to play in enhancing food security; hence, irrigation
expansion would significantly increase agricultural production, improving household
income and reduce food insecurity and poverty levels among smallholder farmers.
However, majority of irrigation schemes developed in Burundi have performed below
their potential. Evaluation of the performance of an irrigation schemes is essential in
knowing whether water availability meets or exceeds demand. In Burundi, these
evaluations are limited. This study aimed to assess the irrigation systems’ performance
and sustainability in Burundi with a case study of Kidwebezi Irrigation Scheme.
Specifically, this study intended (i) to evaluate the performance of the irrigation
structures, (ii) to assess the water delivery performance using technical indicators and (iii)
framers’ knowledge and to assess the effect of Irrigators’ Association on the performance
of Kidwebezi Irrigation scheme with the target of evaluating the existing operation rules
and proposing alternative options for further improvement.
In this study, a float method was used for determining the flow rate. The CROPWAT
Penman-Monteith method was used to determine the reference crop evapotranspiration,
the combination of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) CROPWAT 8.0 simulation
software and the CLIMWAT 2.0 tool was used to calculate the crop water requirement
(CWR) of the paddy.
Field observations (state of a structure) and physical work were used to evaluate the
performance of the irrigation structures. Based on the technical performance indicators
such as efficiency, adequacy, dependability, equity and water productivity, the
performance of water delivery was assessed. A social economic survey (farmer interviews, focus group discussions and key informants) was undertaken to assess
financial self-sufficiency, fee collection and relative water costs of the scheme.
Results for the performance evaluation of irrigation structures showed that 84.15%were
still functioning. On the physical condition part, the findings showed that the intake was
working at 80%; canals network was operational at 80% while command area
development was functioning at 88%.
For the conveyance efficiency, the results indicate that 82.48%, 80.40% and 66.38% of
water conveyed reached the destined farm for lined main canal, lined secondary canal and
unlined secondary canal, respectively. The total net irrigation and total gross irrigation
were 342.2 mm and 760.4 mm. The study results showed that the irrigation system was
good in terms of adequacy and poor in terms of efficiency while it was fair to both
dependability and equity.
Moreover, the results for the assessment of effect of Irrigators’ Association with regard to
financial viability and sustainability of the scheme were found to be encouraging. The
results showed that the effectiveness of fee collection (EFC) was 87.77%, the financial
self-sufficiency (FSS) was 3.11 with an average relative water cost of 0.05 and 97.75% of
the scheme were still irrigated.
The results from farmer interviews, focus group discussions and key informant showed
that the uncontrolled paddy farming expansion, lack of updated irrigation knowledge and
technologies and low efficiency on water use are the main causes of low yields of paddy
in the Kidwebezi Irrigation Scheme.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Irrigation systems, Burundi, Kidwebezi irrigation scheme