ABSTRACT
In Africa, irrigation projects have often enjoyed a privileged status among some policy-makers. They seem the obvious solution for modernizing production, minimizing food imports, removing food deficits, and ameliorating the impact of drought. As an additional component in the production process, irrigation is almost always more expensive than rain-fed cultivation: in African countries, sometimes much more expensive. Kenya’s Bura West project provides a good illustration of how difficult it can be to establish modern irrigation in remote African environments. In practice, the access that irrigation has to privileged status releases those responsible for designing and implementing projects from the necessity of adapting their solution to local circumstances or from learning how to overcome obstacles. African irrigation projects must undergo a basic transformation in modes of approach: from a blueprint to a process learning strategy, and from bureaucratic to participatory management.
